On May 22, 2026, Texas DPS troopers stopped a Volvo truck in Webb County. The driver tried to run. When troopers searched the sleeper berth, they found 20 people hidden inside, including four children.
While DPS and CBP do their very best to hide the identities of these smuggler trucks, we know the truck was operating under the identity of Super Transport International LTD, DOT 692863, out of Laredo, Texas. A 250-truck, 220-driver cross-border carrier. Hazmat authorized. Satisfactory safety rating. The carrier was CTPAT certified by Customs and Border Protection.
Every screening system in the American freight industry gave this carrier a passing grade. So could this be a case of carrier identity theft? Sure, but the numbers that sit on the side of your truck are the indicators that the public has to make a determination on who is operating the truck. We reached out to Super Transport International via email, but received no response. That leaves us with public record and door markings only.
The same week as the STI stop, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Texas announced 271 new immigration and border security cases as part of Operation Take Back America, including 19 people allegedly involved in human smuggling. One of those cases involved a truck driver named Juan Nasario-Reyes who arrived at a checkpoint on May 16 and told officers his vehicle was empty. A K-9 alerted. Law enforcement found four people hidden in the cab and 38 more locked in the trailer from the outside. The temperature inside was 92.5 degrees. The Southern District of Texas, which covers 43 counties from Houston to Laredo, remains one of the busiest federal districts in the country for these cases. The I-35 corridor between Laredo and San Antonio has become one of the most active truck smuggling routes in the country. DPS has made multiple interdictions using commercial motor vehicles in this stretch in the last two years alone.
On November 28, 2025, a DPS trooper pulled over a white Freightliner on I-35 in La Salle County for driving on the improved shoulder. The driver, John David Amaya, 24, of Laredo, did not have a CDL. A K-9 search found 23 people from five countries concealed in the sleeper berth. Amaya was charged with 23 counts of smuggling persons. DPS blurred the truck’s identifying markings in its body-cam footage release, and no news outlet identified the carrier. The carrier in that incident remains publicly unknown. I’m going to argue that anonymity is part of the problem. If a carrier is hiring, employing, or allowing drivers to use their equipment where trafficking takes place, it needs to be documented, trended and scrutinized.
In January 2025, 16 people were found hidden in a Kenworth tractor in Webb County. In May 2022, 203 migrants were discovered in two semi trucks in Webb County. In January 2022, 28 were found in a tractor-trailer on I-35 in Webb County.
The pattern is not new and it’s a hot trafficking lane. What is new is that one of the trucks now belongs to a CTPAT-certified carrier led by a former state trucking association chairman. DPS and CBP did not disclose who this carrier was, just like they seldom disclose who the carrier is. Fortunately, we used our means to determine that this truck belonged to Super Transport International and was, in fact, CTPAT-certified. Super Transport International was founded in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in 1988 by Ernesto Gaytan Sr. The US entity was established in the mid 1990s out of 13519 Mercury Drive in Laredo. Today, the company reports 250 power units, 220 drivers, and 23 million miles a year. It hauls for Tesla, CH Robinson, Diamond Pet Foods, Brose Mexico, Faurecia, Marelli, and 361 other freight principals recorded in FMCSA inspection data.
The company’s president is Ernesto Gaytan Jr. In July 2021, Gaytan was appointed Chairman of the Texas Trucking Association, the first Hispanic, first Mexican American, and youngest person to hold the position. He served through July 2022. TXTA honored him at the outgoing chairman’s dinner for “his expertise on border issues, something that has been at the forefront of trucking this year.”
During his chairmanship, Gaytan championed Texas House Bill 19, which went into effect on September 1, 2021. HB 19 regulates how plaintiff attorneys can bring commercial vehicle crash cases in Texas, limiting discovery, restricting evidence of corporate negligence, and bifurcating trials to protect carrier companies from nuclear verdicts. Gaytan called it “one of our biggest goals” and “a big win for us.”
He also personally presented the TXTA Truck Safety Contest Grand Champion award in 2022, standing alongside insurance executives to recognize the fleets with the best safety records in Texas. On December 22, 2025, Gaytan appeared on the PodWheels podcast discussing B-1 drivers, tort reform, and USMCA trade issues. He was described as a respected fixture in Laredo and in the cross-border transportation sector.
The Gaytan operation is built around a structure common to Laredo border carriers. The Mexican parent, Super Transporte Internacional SA de CV, handles the Mexico side. The US entity, Super Transport International LTD, handles everything beyond the commercial zone. Under US cabotage law, Mexican-domiciled carriers cannot haul domestic freight in the United States. They are restricted to a commercial zone near the border, roughly 25 miles, for drayage purposes. To move freight deeper into the US, you need US operating authority.
The Gaytan family solved this the way most established cross-border operations do: two companies, two countries, shared equipment. Gaytan told FreightWaves in December 2020: “We can borrow equipment across our two companies. We can load something very heavy with one of our specialized trailers in Mexico, and it can go all the way to the U.S.” The father started with one truck hauling specialized heavy loads across Mexico. Today, the combined operation runs around 500 vehicles.
The second-listed officer in STI’s FMCSA filing is Izamar Zapata, who serves as Manager of Safety and Risk Management. Before that, she was the Supervisor of CTPAT and Security.
C-TPAT stands for Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. It is a voluntary CBP program in which companies agree to implement enhanced supply chain security protocols. In exchange, CTPAT-certified carriers receive expedited processing at the border, which in practice means fewer inspections. The entire premise of C-TPAT is that CBP trusts you enough to look less closely at your trucks.
A carrier that moves 250 trucks across the Laredo border corridor with C-TPAT status is crossing with minimal scrutiny. Laredo’s World Trade Bridge processes over a million commercial truck crossings annually. CTPAT carriers get FAST lane access. Fewer stops. Fewer searches. Faster throughput.
CBP’s published CTPAT Highway Carrier Security Criteria require carriers to maintain conveyance tracking and monitoring, but the standard can be satisfied with a paper activity log rather than GPS or telematics. CTPAT does not specifically require cameras, geofencing, or real-time tracking technology.
CTPAT requires carriers to notify CBP immediately upon discovery of any hidden compartment in tractors, trailers, or other rolling stock that crosses the border. They require access controls that prevent unauthorized entry to trucks and the positive identification of all persons at all points of entry. They require a seven-point conveyance integrity inspection before each crossing.
Twenty people in a sleeper berth constitute unauthorized entry. The access controls were either not being followed or failing completely. Whether CBP has reviewed STI’s C-TPAT status since the May 22 incident is not publicly known. Again, they did their best to hide the identity of this and most, if not all, other entities we’ve observed in these trafficking interdiction arrests and investigations. Part of our issue is that carriers are not held responsible for this behavior and there is no public scrutiny.
The person who previously supervised C-TPAT compliance and security for this carrier has her own side companies. OpenCorporates shows Izamar Zapata as managing member and agent of Interport Transportation LLC, a Texas company formed in January 2020 at a residential address in Laredo. That company went inactive on February 27, 2026, the same day STI recorded a violation for operating a CMV without a CDL in its FMCSA record. She also runs IZG Administrative Solutions LLC, which was formed in November 2019 and is still active. Interport also shares an address with MXU Transport, whose broker authority was revoked in April of this year, and it belongs to none other than Ernesto Gaytan. If you’re keeping track, this is now 5 entities Mr. Gaytan is the official on with five different DOT numbers.
The Mexican parent company, Super Transporte Internacional SA de CV, DOT 604831, out of Nuevo Laredo, has three separate violations for operating a CMV without a valid CDL within the past 2 years. June 27, 2024. October 26, 2024. March 23, 2025. All severity 8. All are placed out of service.
The US entity has one. February 27, 2026. Severity 8. A connected carrier, Transportes Larmex SA de CV, DOT 2436353, has another. May 24, 2024. Severity 8. Out of service. Again, if you’re keeping track, that’s five CDL violations across the network in under two years.
STI also holds broker authority under the same MC number. The carriers STI selects to haul freight tell their own story. Backing up to the previous discussion, Gaytan just had another brokerage revoked last month under a different name and DOT number.
AP Hauling LLC out of Laredo. Five trucks. 35 percent driver-out-of-service rate. Insured by Highlander Specialty at the $750,000 federal minimum. Tea Technologies flagged a suspected federal debarment match for one of AP Hauling’s officers, Jesus Rodriguez Flores, against an indefinite Prohibition/Restriction in the SAM exclusion database. AP Hauling had an NESA out-of-service order in 2023 for refusing an audit. AP Hauling shows up in FMCSA inspection records hauling loads where the shipper of record is Super Transport International. STI is both the broker and the shipper for the freight AP Hauling carries.
NH Transportation LLC out of Laredo. Twelve trucks. A conditional safety rating. Authority just got revoked again in March 2026. HOS BASIC at 93 percent. Vehicle Maintenance at 85 percent. Two false log violations at severity 7. The company lists the same person as both Officer 1 and Officer 2 on its FMCSA filing. NH Transportation also appears in inspection records, hauling freight for STI. Its MC number predates its DOT by six years, flagging it as a purchased authority.
STI’s own FMCSA profile tells a story. This is a company that was revered as a safety champion that ran the Texas Trucking Association. 110 total crashes over the life of the authority, including 3 fatal crashes and 59 injuries. The worst single incident was a January 2, 2019, multi-vehicle crash in Houston involving STI’s truck and a truck from 786 Transportation LLC, based in Sugar Land, Texas. Thirteen people were injured. Wet road, daylight, both trucks towed. Three people have been killed in crashes involving STI trucks: one in Texas in September 2001, one in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in June 2015, and one in Albany, Oklahoma, in August 2016.
96 violations on the current record. Vehicle maintenance dominates: brake adjustments, tire failures, ABS malfunctions, and missing periodic inspections. Three separate severity 10 violations: speeding 15 miles per hour or more over, cell phone use while driving a CMV twice. Two false log violations at severity 7, including one for Personal Conveyance abuse. The OOS rate has increased 60 percent over 24 months.
The FMCSA data seems to contradict itself. While the carrier has an FMCSA Satisfactory rating, under the FMCSA’s own enforcement manual, it meets the criteria for a mandatory investigation. The insurance history shows 19 distinct insurers since the late 1990s. The company received $4.9 million in PPP loans across two draws during COVID, both forgiven.
So how does one determine a carrier’s fitness to operate? If the carrier has this kind of a record and has to be run down by police with 20 trafficked illegals in the cab, yet maintains a CTPAT certification and is rewarded with a Satisfactory rating, the question remains: What is “good enough?” Super Transport International passes most screens and has a Satisfactory safety rating. It is insured by a Dow 30 subsidiary. Its authority is 29 years old. Yet, one of its trucks was used to smuggle 20 people, including children.
The FMCSA safety rating system evaluates crashes, violations, inspections, and compliance history. It does not evaluate whether a carrier’s CTPAT certification is functioning. It does not evaluate whether a carrier’s safety manager runs side transportation companies. It does not evaluate whether a carrier’s network of related entities has a pattern of putting unlicensed drivers in CMVs. It does not evaluate what happens in the sleeper berth.
The question is not whether the screening tools are broken. The question is whether the screening tools are measuring the right things. When every metric says a carrier is safe and the carrier’s trucks are being used to move hidden people across the border, the metrics are not wrong. They are incomplete.
Under federal law, using a CMV in human trafficking results in a lifetime CDL ban. The regulatory framework for the carrier is less clear. FMCSA has the authority to initiate an investigation. CBP has the authority to revoke the C-TPAT certification. Neither has publicly acted. The argument could certainly be made that this may not be the first time this has occurred. Data strongly suggests that when someone is finally caught trafficking or taking part in organized criminal activity, it is often not their first time.
A truck is supposed to move freight. When it starts moving hidden people, the company name, the driver, and the operation are all on the line. When the company’s former chairman championed laws to limit carrier liability while his own fleet’s compliance was deteriorating, when his safety manager put unlicensed drivers behind the wheel five times in two years, when the CTPAT certification that was supposed to secure the supply chain instead reduced the inspections that might have caught the smuggling, the system did not fail because it was not watching. The system failed because it was watching the wrong things.
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