The bodies of 46 dead migrants were discovered Monday in a tractor trailer in San Antonio, Texas, city officials said in one of the deadliest recent incidents of human trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border.
San Antonio firefighters said they found “stacks of bodies” and no signs of water in the truck, which was found along railroad tracks in a remote area on the city’s southern outskirts.
Sixteen other people found in the trailer were transported to hospitals for heat stroke and exhaustion, including four minors, but no children were among the dead, the department said.
“The patients we saw were hot to the touch, suffering from heat stroke, exhaustion,” San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told a news conference.
“It was a refrigerated tractor trailer, but there was no visible working air conditioning unit on that rig.”
Temperatures in San Antonio, which is about 160 miles (250 km) from the Mexican border, swelled to a high of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 C) on Monday with high humidity.
City police chief William McManus said a person working in a nearby building heard a cry for help and came out to investigate.
The worker found that the trailer’s doors were partially open and looked inside and found a number of bodies.
McManus said it was the largest incident of its kind in the city and said three people were in custody after the incident, although their involvement is not yet clear.
A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) said its Department of Homeland Security was investigating “an alleged human trafficking incident” in conjunction with local police.
The deaths once again highlight the challenge of controlling migrant crossings at the US-Mexico border, which have reached record highs.
The issue was difficult for US President Joe Biden, a Democrat who took office in January 2021 and promised to reverse some of the harsh immigration policies of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump.
Republicans criticized Biden’s border strategy ahead of the midterm congressional elections in November.
Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, called the suffocation of the migrants in the truck the “tragedy in Texas” on Twitter and said consular officials would go to the hospitals where victims were taken to help “as much as possible”.
A spokesman for the Honduran Foreign Ministry told Reuters the country’s consulates in Houston and Dallas would investigate the incident. Ebrard said two Guatemalans were admitted to hospital and Guatemala’s foreign ministry said on Twitter that consular officials were going to the hospital “to verify if there are two Guatemalan minors there and in what condition they are.”
The I-35 highway near where the truck was found runs through San Antonio from the Mexican border and is a popular smuggling corridor due to the large volume of truck traffic, according to Jack Staton, a former senior official at ICE’s investigation unit who retired in December.
In July 2017, 10 migrants died after being transported in a tractor trailer discovered by San Antonio police in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The driver, James Matthew Bradley, Jr., was sentenced next year to life in prison for his role in the smuggling operation.
Staton said migrants have been regularly intercepted in the area since the 2017 incident.
“It was only a matter of time before a tragedy like this would happen again,” he said.