Forty-six people were found dead in and near a cargo truck and 16 others were taken to hospitals in an alleged attempt to smuggle immigrants into the United States, authorities in San Antonio said.
It is one of the deadliest tragedies that have claimed thousands of lives trying to cross the US border from Mexico in recent decades. Ten migrants died in 2017 after becoming trapped inside a truck that was parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 migrants were found in a suffocating truck southeast of that same Texas city.
The south of the state has long been the area of choice for illegal border crossings. The migrants pass through the Border Patrol checkpoints in vehicles towards San Antonio, the first major city, from where they disperse throughout the United States.
A municipal worker on a remote racetrack in southwest San Antonio was alerted to the situation by a cry for help shortly before 6 p.m. Monday, Police Chief William McManus said. Agents arrived to find a body on the ground outside the truck and a partially open tonneau door, he added.
Hours later, body bags lay strewn on the ground near the trailer in a grim reminder of the tragedy. There were still bodies inside.
Four children among those transferred to hospitals
Among the 16 people taken to hospitals with heat-related conditions were 12 adults and four children, Fire Chief Charles Hood said. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water was found in the vehicle, he said.
“They were suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion,” Hood said. “It was a refrigerated trailer, but there was no visible air conditioning unit that would work on that truck.”
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the 46 who died had “families who were probably trying to find a better life.”
“This is nothing short of a horrible human tragedy,” Nirenberg said.
The people aboard the truck were part of a suspected migrant smuggling attempt and Homeland Security Investigations was conducting an investigation, McManus said.
Three people were detained, but it was not clear if they were related to human trafficking, the police chief added.
Trailers became a popular method of smuggling in the early 1990s, following increased border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, then the busiest corridors for migrants entering from illegally in the United States.
Before that, people paid small fees to makeshift operators to help them cross the border, which was then less guarded. After crossings became more difficult after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, migrants were herded through more dangerous regions and in exchange for thousands of dollars.
Heat is a serious hazard, especially when temperatures can get very high inside vehicles. The weather in the San Antonio area was mostly cloudy Monday, but temperatures hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius).
Some activists related the tragedy to the immigration policies of the government of President Joe Biden. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director for the American Immigration Council, wrote that he had feared such an incident for months.
“With the border as closed as it is today to migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have increasingly been pushed onto more dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is one way in,” he stated on Twitter.
Stephen Miller, one of the main architects of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, said that “smugglers and human traffickers are evil and evil” and that the administration’s approach to border security rewards their actions.
For his part, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who is up for re-election in November, was blunt about the Democratic president in a tweet: “These deaths are Biden’s fault. They are the result of his deadly open border policies”
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel YouTube and turn on notifications, or follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter e Instagram.