City officials said the bodies of 46 dead migrants were found in a tractor trailer on Monday in San Antonio, Texas. It is one of the most deadly cases of human trafficking along the US-Mexico border.
An official at the San Antonio Fire Department said there was a “mountain of bodies” on a truck found next to a railroad track in a remote area on the southern outskirts of the city, with no signs of water.
The other 16 found in the trailer were taken to the hospital due to heat stroke and malaise, four of whom were minors, but none of the dead had children.
“The patients we saw were hot to the touch and suffered from heat stroke and fatigue,” San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said in a press conference.
“It was a refrigerated tractor trailer, but the rig had no visible working A / C unit.”
Approximately 160 miles (250 km) from the Mexican border, temperatures in San Antonio were humid on Monday, rising to a maximum of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees).
The city’s police chief, William McManus, said a person working in a nearby building had heard a cry for help and went into an investigation.
Workers found many corpses when they looked inside with the trailer door partially open.
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Law enforcement officers are working on June 27, 2022, at the scene where people were found dead in a trailer truck in San Antonio, Texas, USA. REUTERS / Kaylee Greenlee Beal
McManus said this was the largest incident of its kind in the city, with three people detained after the incident, but their involvement is still unclear.
A spokesperson for the US Immigration and Customs Office (ICE) said the National Security Investigation Department is working with local police to investigate “suspected trafficking cases.”
The dead again highlight the challenge of controlling the crossing of immigrants at the US-Mexico border, which has reached record heights.
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Rose Perez detains his mother, Scarlet Chavez, on June 27, 2022, in San Antonio, Texas, USA, when people are found dead in a trailer truck. REUTERS / Kaylee Greenlee Beal
The problem can be difficult for US President Joe Biden, who took office in January 2021, by pledged to overturn some of Republican predecessor Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policy. Proven.
Republicans have criticized Biden’s border strategy prior to the November midterm elections.
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Law enforcement officers are working on June 28, 2022, at the scene where people were found dead in a trailer truck in San Antonio, Texas, USA. REUTERS / Go Nakamura
Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Evrad called the suffocation of migrants in the truck a “Texas tragedy” on Twitter, and consular officials said the victims would go to the hospital where they were taken to help “as much as possible.” ..
A Honduras Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters that state consulates in Houston and Dallas would investigate the case. Evrad said two Guatemalan people were hospitalized, and the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs was on Twitter to see consular officials “whether there are two Guatemalan minors and how they are.” “To go to the hospital.”
The I-35 highway near where the truck was found is a popular smuggling corridor from the Mexican border through San Antonio and due to the heavy traffic of trucks, a former official of the ICE research unit. Jack Staton is in December.
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Law enforcement officers are working on June 27, 2022, at the scene where people were found dead in a trailer truck in San Antonio, Texas, USA. REUTERS / Kaylee Greenlee Beal
In July 2017, 10 migrants died after being transported by a trailer truck found by San Antonio police in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The driver, James Matthew Bradley Jr., was sentenced to life imprisonment the following year for his role in smuggling operations.
Immigrants have been regularly intercepted in the area since the 2017 incident, Staton said.
“It was only a matter of time before such a tragedy happened again,” he said.
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Law enforcement officers are working on June 27, 2022, at the scene where people were found dead in a trailer truck in San Antonio, Texas, USA. REUTERS / Kaylee Greenlee Beal