Quebec smuggler pleads guilty after pregnant woman dies on journey from Canada into U.S.
A Quebec man who was paid to illegally smuggle a pregnant woman from Canada into the United States, in a winter plot that ended with her drowning in a freezing river near the border, has pleaded guilty in New York.
The case reveals a harrowing tale of cross-border people smuggling.
Jhader Augusto Uribe-Tobar, 37, is a citizen of Colombia who was living in Quebec while advertising his people smuggling services on social media.
Miguel Mojarro-Magana, who was in the United States, saw a TikTok video advertising crossings into the United States from Canada, with instructions to contact a phone number with an area code for the suburbs around Montreal.
On Dec. 7, 2023, he texted about having his wife smuggled to join him in the U.S.
“It costs $2500 America, it is worked through Montreal and they are left in the City of Plattsburgh, NY,” was the reply, according to court records translated into English from Spanish.
“How much do they walk bro,” Mojarro-Magana asked, presumably concerned about his visibly pregnant wife, Ana Karen Vasquez-Flores. He was told it was two and a half hours to three hours, “depends how you walk.”
“And is it safe?” Mojarro-Magana asked.
“Well, look, truth is, the only certain thing in life is death, but we are effective,” was the reply.
They moved their chat to WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging app.
There was a heavy, wet snowfall in the forecast as temperatures hovered near freezing in northern New York on Dec. 11, 2023, the day of his wife’s crossing.
Mojarro-Magana, the husband, and Uribe-Tobar, the smuggler, messaged back and forth about payment and plans.
As Mojarro-Magana was arranging a money transfer, his wife was picked up for the start of her journey. She took a quick photo of the vehicle that came for her and sent it to her husband. It was a red GMC Terrain SUV with Quebec licence plates.
The smuggler waited with Vasquez-Flores at an Esso gas station in St. Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., about seven kilometres north of the U.S. border, refusing to leave until his money arrived, according to court documents.
By 2:38 p.m., three minutes after the husband sent a photograph of a JP Morgan Chase deposit receipt for US$2,500 that had been deposited into a chequing account as told to by Uribe-Tobar, the GMC pulled out of the gas station heading south towards the Canada-U.S. border.
Vasquez-Flores made it into the United States about two kilometres west of the Champlain border crossing station. The smuggler was monitoring her progress through her sharing her phone location.
About one kilometre into New York, she was directed to the bank of the Great Chazy River near the intersection of Perry Mills Road and Missile Base Road in Champlain, N.Y. As she walked, she was texting both her husband and the smuggler. The smuggler and the husband were also texting. She was told the river was “wadable” even in this weather.
“She is crossing friend,” Uribe-Tobar texted her husband, “silence.”
“I’m very nervous,” the husband replied.
The smuggler continued to direct Vasquez-Flores as she crossed: “Get off further ahead”, “at your right hand side”, “there is a wall that slows down the river.” His last message to her, sent at 6:17 p.m., was not delivered. Authorities suspect this is when she was swept away by the frigid water.
Nearly 50 minutes later the smuggler sent an alarming message to the husband: “Bro, hello, I think she got wet or turned off her cell phone.”
For most of the night a desperate Mojarro-Magana watched and waited for his wife while texting Uribe-Tobar.
“Are your people waiting for her there?” the husband asked.
“They are activated friend,” came the reply.
“And you can’t search” he asked.
The smuggler said he had already let his people know. “I told them what happened and that she is pregnant.”
The plan had been for Mojarro-Magana to meet his wife — after she crossed — at the McDonald’s in Champlain, N.Y. After no luck searching, he went there and waited. When he received a notification that her phone battery was about to die he told U.S. Border Patrol Agents about his search for his pregnant wife.
Law enforcement officials found footprints in the snow leading into the river. On Dec. 14, 2023, Vasquez-Flores’s body was found in the river in the village of Champlain. The cause of death was asphyxia due to drowning.
It didn’t take too much to identify the smuggler.
Two months before the deadly crossing, the RCMP encountered Uribe-Tobar in a red GMC Terrain SUV on a Quebec road about 1.4 kilometres from the United States border. He was driving four Mexican passengers, according to U.S. documents filed in court in New York.
The driver and the passengers were all released by the RCMP, according to the documents. Shortly afterwards, the same four Mexican nationals were apprehended by U.S. authorities after illegally crossing the border in the middle of the night.
That traffic stop, that went nowhere in Canada, later helped connect Uribe-Tobar to the vehicle used in the smuggling plot that ended with the woman’s death. Quebec car insurance records were then used to connect Uribe-Tobar to the phone number used to arrange the failed crossing.
RCMP officers later looked at video surveillance footage form the gas station. An officer confirmed Vasquez-Flores was with Uribe-Tobar in the vehicle. She was wearing the same black shirt with a white Calvin Klein logo she had on when her body was recovered.
The video showed another woman and child was with them, too. They were not being smuggled, though; the child was later identified as Uribe-Tobar’s daughter, and the woman his wife or girlfriend, the RCMP found.
Uribe-Tobar was extradited from Canada to face trial in the U.S. this February. On Tuesday, through a Spanish interpreter, he pleaded guilty to alien smuggling and alien smuggling resulting in a death , and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling.
The charges carry a sentence with a minimum of three years imprisonment and a maximum of life.
His sentencing is scheduled for February 2026.
Uribe-Tobar’s lawyer, a public defender, did not respond to requests for comment prior to publishing deadline.
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | X: AD_Humphreys
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