SAN ANTONIO (Texas), June 28 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Forty-six possible migrants were found dead and 16 others were taken to hospitals after a tractor-trailer rig used in a presumed smuggling attempt was found Monday on a remote back road in southwest San Antonio, Texas.
A city worker at the scene was alerted to the situation by a cry for help shortly before 6 p.m. Monday, Police Chief William McManus said. Officers arrived to find a body on the ground outside the trailer and a partially opened gate to the trailer, he said.
Of the 16 taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses, 12 were adults and four were children, said Fire Chief Charles Hood. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water was found in the trailer, he said.
He added that the lorry had no working air conditioning and that there was no water inside it.
According to KSAT TV channel, the vehicle was discovered next to rail tracks in San Antonio’s Southwest Side.
A large number of emergency responders, including police, fire, and ambulance services, could be seen surrounding the large truck
Three people were taken into custody, but it was unclear if they were absolutely connected with human trafficking, McManus said.
Those in the trailer were part of a presumed migrant smuggling attempt into the United States, and the investigation was being led by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, McManus said.
Those in the trailer were in a presumed migrant smuggling attempt in South Texas, according to an official.
It may be the deadliest tragedy among thousands who have died attempting to cross the U.S. border from Mexico in recent decades. Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck that was parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.
Big rigs emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid a surge in U.S. border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, which were then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.
Before that, people paid small fees to mom-and-pop operators to get them across a largely unguarded border. As crossing became exponentially more difficult after the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., migrants were led through more dangerous terrain and paid thousands of dollars more.
Heat poses a serious danger, particularly when temperatures can rise severely inside vehicles. Weather in the San Antonio area was mostly cloudy Monday, but temperatures approached 100 degrees.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said the country’s consul was en route to the site of the discovery, but added that the victims’ nationalities were still unknown.
Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott blamed US President Joe Biden for the deaths, describing them as a “result of his deadly open border policies”.
Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate running against Abbott, said the reports were devastating and called for urgent action to “dismantle human smuggling rings and replace them with expanded avenues for legal migration”.
Immigration is a contentious political issue in the United States, where last year a record numbers of undocumented migrants were detained crossing into the country from Mexico – many traveling along extremely risky and unsafe routes.
San Antonio’s climate is hot in the summer months with temperatures there reaching 39.4C (103F) on Monday. — NNN-AGENCIES
