A San Diego man who took part in a scheme to hold migrants captive and demand ransom payments from their families — leaving at least two migrants missing and presumed dead — was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison.
Federal prosecutors say migrants seeking to be smuggled into the United States were tricked by members of a Tijuana-based trafficking organization that instead kidnapped the victims and held them against their will.
Those migrants included a man and a woman who were abducted separately in 2024 and remain missing despite their families making thousands of dollars in ransom payments.
In September 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Isaac Jimenez personally collected $15,000 from the family of the kidnapped man, then delivered it to his co-conspirators in Mexico.
The kidnappers later demanded more money from the man’s wife and other family members. After receiving the additional payments, they threatened to kill the man unless the family paid more, prosecutors said.
When the family could not give more money, communications with the smugglers ended and the whereabouts of the man — a father of four — remain unknown, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
In December 2024, Jimenez agreed to coordinate the smuggling of a 20- year-old Tijuana woman for $7,000, prosecutors said.
Jimenez’s co-conspirators then abducted the woman and demanded $30,000 from her family. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said video calls made to the woman’s fiance and other family members showed the kidnappers pointing guns at her and kicking her in the head and chest.
Her family sent $10,000 to the smugglers, but she was not released.
Prosecutors say Jimenez did not personally abduct the victims or hold them captive, but was aware his co-conspirators were taking part in abductions and “to the best of (his) knowledge,” both victims were killed in Mexico.
Jimenez pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal charges. As part of his guilty plea, Jimenez has agreed to pay $24,500 to the missing migrants’ families for funeral expenses and restitution for a portion of the ransom payments made.
Family members of the two victims appeared in San Diego federal court for Jimenez’s sentencing hearing and lamented the loss of their loves ones, as well as the anguish of not knowing where their remains were.
The wife of the kidnapped man recounted the phone call she received from her husband, in which he told her, “You need to pay the money or they’re going to put a bullet in my head.”
She said, “Those words and the fear in his voice have never left me.”
The father of the kidnapped woman said, “It felt like the world stopped” when he received the phone call from his daughter, in which she begged him not to call the police because her abductors had threatened to kill her if he did. Later, the family received video calls showing her tied up and beaten, with guns pointed at her head.
“No parent should see their own child subjected to that suffering,” he said.
Searches for his daughter in the months that followed proved fruitless until a “clandestine grave” was discovered with two teeth that were later confirmed to belong to the woman, her father said. Other bones have since been discovered that match her DNA, but the search for her complete remains continues, her father said, with each discovery or potential discovery of remains renewing the “cycle that forces us to relive the kidnapping.”
The man said, “There’s questions that have no answers and this grief that has no closure.”
Jimenez addressed the families directly, saying “I would have liked to have control over what happened. I don’t know what happened to your family members. I don’t know where they are.”
He also told U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino, “For a long time, I thought I was helping people. Now, I realize that it was never that way.”
Jimenez’s defense attorney, Douglas Brown, wrote in his sentencing papers that Jimenez had been involved in smuggling for years, but no one had ever been extorted or harmed prior to these incidents. Brown wrote Jimenez had expected that the two victims in the case would be able to cross safely.
When Jimenez realized what had occurred, he turned himself in, Brown argued.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Miller argued Jimenez only did so after the victims’ families determined his involvement in their loved ones’ disappearances and posted pictures of him on social media. The prosecutor also said Jimenez continued engaging in smuggling after the two victims’ kidnappings and while knowing the victims had been abducted.
