SAN DIEGO — On the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving in 2022, a panga piloted by two cousins from Baja California capsized as it approached the shoreline off Imperial Beach. The cousins and five of the undocumented immigrants they were transporting made it safely onto the beach, but three others drowned.

The cousins were eventually sentenced to less than five years each in federal custody for their roles in the deadly mishap. Both are scheduled to be released from prison in 2026.

Their fates stand in stark contrast to the punishment U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recommended this week for the two suspected smugglers charged in connection with the panga that capsized Monday morning near Del Mar, leaving three people dead and a 10-year-old girl missing and presumed dead.

“I will … be urging the Attorney General to seek the death penalty in this case,” Noem said in a statement Tuesday evening. “The Department of Homeland Security will not tolerate this level of criminal depravity or reckless disregard for human life.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi will ultimately be responsible for deciding whether to seek the death penalty against Jesus Ivan Rodriguez Leyva, 36, and Julio Cesar Zuniga Luna, 30. But death-penalty sentences would be far harsher than the sentences that federal judges in San Diego have handed down in recent years to convicted smugglers in similar cases.

In the Southern District of California, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties, the harshest punishment in such a case over the past decade appears to be the 18-year prison term handed down to a boat captain responsible for three deaths in May 2021 near Point Loma, according to a review of cases involving smuggling deaths. One man who led a group of 14 migrants through an underground drainage pipe, resulting in the drowning death of his brother and fellow guide and the near-drowning of a migrant woman, was sentenced to just three years and nine months in prison.

“Cases should be decided on the facts, not depending on which administration is in power,” San Diego defense attorney Tommy Vu, who is not representing either of the defendants, said Friday. “My hope is that (the Department of Justice) treats this case like any other case and will not be pressured by what (Noem) says.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice and a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego declined to comment on Noem’s request.

On her first day in office in February, Bondi issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors lifting the Biden administration’s moratorium on federal executions.

“Absent significant mitigating circumstances, federal prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a law-enforcement officer and capital crimes committed by aliens who are illegally present in the United States,” the memorandum stated.

Prosecutors identified Rodriguez and Zuniga as Mexican nationals. It’s not believed that either was authorized to be in the U.S.

Defense attorney Gerald McFadden, who was assigned by the court to represent Rodriguez, said Thursday when reached by phone that he had not yet met with his client but was planning to meet him that afternoon. McFadden said he didn’t yet know enough details about the case to discuss it and declined to comment on Noem pushing for the death penalty against his client.

A defense attorney assigned to represent Zuniga did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Both defendants appeared in court Friday morning for scheduled detention hearings, which would typically involve arguments about why they should be held in detention or released on bond while awaiting trial. But the attorneys for both men asked for additional time to prepare, and a judge set new hearings for the following week. No additional details about the case were discussed.

Rodriguez and Zuniga face three counts each of bringing in undocumented immigrants resulting in death, charges that each carries a maximum sentence of life in prison or the death penalty. But federal death penalty cases are rare, and the review process is extensive. The decision to seek the death penalty would require approval by Bondi after input from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego and officials at the highest levels of the Department of Justice.

Federal executions are also rare, with just 50 carried out since 1927, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

But 13 of those 50 were carried out during President Donald Trump’s first term, all in the final six months, standing in stark contrast to the four federal executions carried out between 1958 and 2020. Among those executed were Brandon Bernard, a Texas man who was 18 when he was involved in the 1998 murder of an Iowa couple, although he wasn’t the gunman, and Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on death row, who was convicted of murdering an expectant mother and cutting her still-living baby from her body.

Former President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of abolishing the federal death penalty but never acted to do so. Instead, his attorney general issued a moratorium early in his term, and last year, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal death row inmates. The three who did not receive commutations were all mass murderers — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who bombed the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding hundreds; Dylann Roof, a White man who in 2015 killed nine congregants at a Black church in South Carolina; and Robert Bowers, who in 2018 murdered 11 congregants at the Tree of life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

There are no federal executions currently scheduled, but last month, Bondi directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the first time during Trump’s second term. The order was directed at Luigi Mangione, who is suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.

Bondi’s memo lifting the Biden-era moratorium on executions also directed a committee to review all still-open cases in which the Department of Justice during the Biden administration chose not to seek the death penalty against eligible defendants. In San Diego, that would likely include the decision not to seek the death penalty against Matthew Taylor Coleman, an alleged conspiracy theorist charged with killing his two young children in Mexico.

While the longest sentence for a smuggling death in San Diego is the 18 years given to the captain in the Point Loma boat crash, most local smuggling death cases have resulted in shorter sentences, even when more people die or are permanently injured. One of the men who coordinated a smuggling attempt that left 13 migrants dead when their vehicle was involved in a collision near Calexico was sentenced to 15 years in prison. One woman who crashed while transporting five migrants, leaving two dead, one brain-dead and one paralyzed from the waist down, was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Earlier this year, a federal jury in Texas convicted two men in connection with the deaths of 53 migrants who had been packed into a semi-trailer in 2022. Five others had previously pleaded guilty to charges related to the worst human-smuggling disaster in modern U.S. history. All seven face up to life in prison when they’re sentenced.

“There are enhancements in the sentencing guidelines when death or serious bodily injury occurs,” Vu, the defense attorney and a partner at Stitt Vu Trial Lawyers, explained about differences in sentences. “The sentencing guidelines do account for aggravating factors … but ultimately that’s a swing of a couple years, not a swing of life or death.”

If prosecutors were to seek the death penalty against Rodriguez and Zuniga, they must do so before trial. There is no deadline yet for that decision, but a judge could set a deadline in the future.

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