Desperate families of migrants from Mexico and Central America frantically searched for the word of their loved ones as authorities began the sad task of identifying 51 people who died after being abandoned in an air-conditioned tractor-trailer in the sweltering heat of Texas.
It was the deadliest tragedy that has claimed the lives of migrants smuggled into the border from Mexico.
Police and other rescuers are working at the scene where officials say dozens of people have been found dead and several more were taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses after a semi-trailer containing alleged migrants was found, Monday 27 June 2022 in San Antonio. (Photo AP / Eric Gay) (AP)
He said the truck had passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo, Texas, on Interstate 35.
I didn’t know if there were migrants inside the truck when it got out of control.
Investigators tracked the truck’s record to a residence in San Antonio and arrested two Mexican men for possession of weapons, according to criminal charges filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The allegations did not make any specific allegations related to the deaths.
The couple has been accused of possessing firearms while residing illegally in the United States, according to court documents and U.S. authorities, Reuters reports.
Carlow Eduardo Espina places roses at an makeshift monument on the site where officials found dozens of people dead in a semi-trailer containing alleged migrants, on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 in San Antonio. (Photo AP / Eric Gay) (AP)
The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio when a city worker heard a scream calling for help from the truck parked on a lonely road and found the horrifying scene inside, the police chief said. William McManus.
Hours later, the bags of corpses were lying on the ground.
More than a dozen people, with their bodies warm to the touch, were taken to hospitals, including four children. Most of the dead were men, he said.
The death toll was the highest in a smuggling attempt in the United States, according to Craig Larrabee, a special agent in charge of national security investigations in San Antonio.
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg in the center, with San Antonio Police Chief William McManus on the left, briefly the media and others at the scene, where they said dozens of people they have been found dead and several others were taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses after a semi-trailer. containing alleged migrants was found on Monday, June 27, 2022 in San Antonio. (Photo AP / Eric Gay) (AP)
“This is a horror that surpasses anything we’ve experienced before,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said.
“And unfortunately it’s an avoidable tragedy.”
President Joe Biden called the deaths “horrible and heartbreaking.”
“Exploiting vulnerable people for profit is shameful, as is the political position around the tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to prevent traffickers and human traffickers from taking advantage of people. seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry “. Biden said in a statement.
Authorities did not know the countries of origin of all the migrants, nor how long they were abandoned on the side of the road.
On Tuesday afternoon, forensic doctors had potentially identified 34 of the victims, but were taking additional steps, such as fingerprints, to confirm identities, Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores said.
Of the dead, 27 are believed to be of Mexican descent according to documents they carried, according to Rubén Minutti, Mexico’s consul general in San Antonio.
Several survivors were in critical condition with injuries such as brain damage and internal bleeding, he said.
At least seven of the dead were from Guatemala and two from Honduras, Roberto Velasco Alvarez, head of the North American department of the Mexican Department of Foreign Affairs, said on Twitter.
About 30 people had contacted the Mexican consulate to search for loved ones, officials said.
Attempts to cross the U.S. border from Mexico have claimed thousands of lives in the two countries over the past few decades.
U.S. border authorities are stopping migrants more often at the southern border than at any time in at least two decades.
Migrants were arrested about 240,000 times in May, a third more than a year ago.
The rain falls as two men pay their respects at the place where officials found dozens of people dead in a semi-trailer containing alleged migrants, on Tuesday, June 28, 2022, in San Antonio. (Photo AP / Eric Gay) (AP)
Comparisons with pre-pandemic levels are complicated because migrants deported under a public health authority known as Title 42 do not face legal consequences, which encourages repeated attempts.
Authorities say 25% of meetings in May were with people who had been stopped at least once the previous year.
South Texas has long been the busiest area for illegal border crossings.
U.S. authorities discover trucks with migrants inside “quite close” on a daily basis, Larrabee said.
Migrants typically pay between $ 8,000 and $ 10,000 to be transported to the border and loaded onto a tractor-trailer and driven to San Antonio, where they are transported to smaller vehicles to their final destinations in the United States, he said.
Conditions vary widely, including the amount of water passengers receive and whether they are allowed to carry cell phones, Larrabee said.
Priests gather near the scene where officials say dozens of people have been found dead and many more were taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses after a semi-trailer containing alleged migrants was found, Monday, June 27 from 2022 to San Antonio. (Photo AP / Eric Gay) (AP)
Authorities believe the truck discovered Monday had mechanical problems when it was left next to a railroad track in an area of San Antonio surrounded by scrap cars colliding with a busy highway, Wolff said.
San Antonio has been a recurring scene of tragedy and despair in recent years with migrants in semi-trailers.
Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck parked in a San Antonio Walmart.
In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a suffocating truck in the southeast of the city.
More than 50 migrants were found alive in a trailer in 2018, driven by a man who said he would be paid $ 3,000 and was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
Other tragedies have occurred long before migrants arrived in the US.
In December, more than 50 died when a semi-trailer overturned on a road in southern Mexico.
In October, Mexican authorities reported finding 652 migrants packed in six trailers stopped at a military checkpoint near the border.
Some of the 16 people taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses remained hospitalized on Tuesday in critical condition.
Migrants, mostly from Nicaragua, cross the Rio Grande River into the United States at Eagle Pass, Texas on Friday, May 20, 2022. The Eagle Pass area has become an increasingly popular passageway for to migrants, especially those from outside Mexico and Central America. , under the authority of Title 42, which expels migrants without the possibility of seeking asylum for reasons of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Pandemic-related restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the southern border must continue, according to a judge’s (AP) rule
Those taken to the hospital were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water was found in the trailer, fire chief Charles Hood said.
“They were suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion,” Hood said.
“It was a refrigerated tractor-trailer, but there was no AC unit running visibly on that platform.”
Temperatures in Sant Antoni on Monday approached 38ºC.
Large platforms emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid an increase in U.S. border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.
Before that, people paid small fees to cross a largely unguarded border.
As the crossing became much more difficult after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., migrants were driven through more dangerous terrain and had to pay thousands of dollars.
Some advocates drew a link to the Biden administration’s border policies. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, director of policy for the American Immigration Council, wrote that he had feared this tragedy for months.
The newly erected border wall meanders through the Sonoran Desert just west of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, separating Mexico, on the left, and the United States, in Douglas, Arizona in 2020. (AP)
“With the border as tightly closed as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have been pushed into increasingly dangerous routes,” he wrote on Twitter.
Migrants, largely from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, have been deported more than two million times under the rule of the pandemic era in force since March 2020 that denies the possibility of seeking asylum.
The Biden administration planned to end the policy, but a Louisiana federal judge blocked the measure in May.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 557 deaths at the southwest border in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, more than double the 247 deaths recorded the previous year and the highest since started tracking in 1998.
Most were related to heat exposure.