SAN ANTONIO (AP) – Desperate families of immigrants from Mexico and Central America have been searching for their loved ones as authorities launched a grueling operation on Tuesday to find 50 people who lost their lives after being abandoned on a tractor without air conditioning. . heat.
It was the worst tragedy that cost the lives of migrants who smuggled across the Mexican border.
The driver of the truck and two other people were arrested, US MP Henry Cuelar from Texas told the Associated Press.
He said the truck had passed a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo, Texas, at Interstate 35. He did not know if any immigrants were inside the truck when he cleared the checkpoint.
The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio when a city official heard a cry for help from a truck parked on a lonely street and found the gruesome scene inside, said Police Chief William McManus. Hours later, body bags were lying on the ground.
More than a dozen people – their bodies warm to the touch – were taken to hospitals, including four children.
Forty-six people were found dead at the scene, authorities said. Another four died later after being taken to hospitals, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolf, the county’s top elected official. Among the dead were 39 men and 11 women, he said.
The death toll was the highest ever in the United States from a smuggling incident, according to Craig Larabi, the current special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations in San Antonio.
“This is a horror that goes beyond anything we have experienced in the past,” said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nuremberg. “And unfortunately it is a tragedy that can be avoided.”
President Joe Biden described the deaths as “frightening and heartbreaking”.
“Exploiting vulnerable people for profit is shameful, as is the political stance surrounding the tragedy, and my government will continue to do everything possible to prevent smugglers and traffickers from exploiting people seeking to enter the United States.” between ports of entry “. Biden said in a statement.
The countries of origin of all the migrants and how long they had been abandoned on the side of the road were not immediately known.
At least 22 were from Mexico, seven from Guatemala and two from Honduras, Roberto Velasco Alvarez, head of North America’s Mexico External Relations Department, said on Twitter. Families approached the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio all morning looking for their loved ones, an official there said.
Attempts to cross the US border from Mexico have claimed thousands of lives in both countries in recent decades.
U.S. border authorities stop immigrants more often at the southern border than at any time in at least two decades. Immigrants stopped almost 240,000 times in May, an increase of one-third from a year earlier.
Comparisons with pre-pandemic levels are complex because migrants expelled under a public health authority known as Title 42 face no legal consequences, encouraging repetitive efforts. Authorities say 25% of meetings in May were with people who had stopped at least once in the past year.
South Texas has long been the busiest area for illegal border crossings. Immigrants drive through Border Patrol checkpoints to San Antonio, the nearest major city, where they are scattered throughout the United States.
Wolff said Tuesday that authorities believe the truck had mechanical problems and was abandoned. “They had just parked it on the side of the road,” he said.
Officials have asked neighboring counties to help with the number of bodies, he said.
San Antonio has been a recurring scene of tragedy and despair in recent years with immigrants in semi-trailers.
Ten immigrants 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 drowned truck southeast of the city. More than 50 migrants were found alive in a trailer in 2018, led by a man who said he had to pay $ 3,000 and was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
“These drivers are getting money from the cartels,” said State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat from San Antonio. “I am sure that many times these trucks reach their destination successfully. “Unfortunately, this has happened too often now.”
Other incidents occurred long before immigrants arrived at the US border. In December, more than 50 people were killed when a semi-trailer full of migrants overturned on a highway in southern Mexico. In October, Mexican authorities reported finding 652 migrants packed in six trailers near the U.S. border. They were stopped at a military checkpoint.
The truck discovered Monday was next to a railroad track in an area of San Antonio surrounded by scrap cars crashing into a busy freeway.
Of the sixteen people taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses, four died later. At least four were in critical condition, according to hospitals.
Those taken to hospital were hot and dehydrated and no water was found in the trailer, said fire chief Charles Hood.
“They suffered from heatstroke and exhaustion,” Hood said. “It was a tractor-trailer refrigerator, but there was no visible AC unit on this platform.”
Temperatures in San Antonio on Monday approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). Heat is a serious hazard, especially when temperatures rise significantly inside vehicles.
Large platforms emerged as a popular method of smuggling in the early 1990s amid increased U.S. border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.
Before that, people used to pay small fees to mom and pop operators to cross a highly unguarded border. As transit became exponentially more difficult after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, immigrants were driven into more dangerous territory and had to pay thousands of dollars more.
Some supporters have linked to the Biden government’s border policies. Aaron Reichlin-Melnik, policy director at the American Immigration Council, wrote that he feared such a tragedy for months.
“With borders closed as tightly as they do today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people are being pushed into increasingly dangerous routes,” he wrote on Twitter.
Immigrants – mostly from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – have been deported more than 2 million times under the March 2020 pandemic rule that denies them asylum. The Biden government was planning to end the policy, but a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the move in May.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 557 deaths at its southwestern border in the 12 months to September 30, more than double the 247 deaths reported last year and the highest since it began monitoring in 1998. Most were related to a report in heat.
Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press reporters Ken Miller in Oklahoma City and Terry Wallace in Dallas contributed.
