SAN ANTONIO (AP) – In the chaotic minutes after dozens of migrants were found dead inside a tractor under the Texas sun, the driver tried to slip away pretending to be one of the survivors, a Mexican immigration official told.
The driver and three other men remained in custody as the investigation into the tragedy that killed 53 people – the country’s deadliest smuggling incident on the US-Mexico border – continued.  Federal prosecutors say two of the suspects, including the driver, face charges that could carry a life sentence or the death penalty if convicted.
Two other people were killed Wednesday as the death toll rose sharply after 46 bodies were found Monday at a car park near the outskirts of San Antonio.
The truck was full of 67 people and the dead were 27 from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, said Francisco Garduno, head of the Mexican National Immigration Institute.
Officials have been able to identify 37 of the victims since Wednesday, pending verification with authorities in other countries, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office.  Forty of the victims were men, he said.
Locating the dead was difficult because some were found without identity documents and in one case a stolen identity card.  The remote villages from which some of the migrants came to Mexico and Central America do not have a telephone service to communicate with family members, and fingerprint data must be shared and matched by the governments involved.
Javier Flores Lopez’s family was waiting to find out if he was in the truck.  He had returned home to see his wife and three young children in southern Mexico and was returning to Ohio where his father and a brother lived and worked in construction.  He is now missing and his cousin Jose Luis Vazquez Guzman is being treated at a San Antonio hospital, the family said.
The tragedy came at a time when huge numbers of immigrants were coming to the United States, many of whom were taking dangerous risks to cross rushing rivers and canals and hot desert landscapes.  Immigrants stopped almost 240,000 times in May, an increase of one-third from a year earlier.
Although it is not clear when and where the migrants boarded the truck bound for San Antonio, Homeland Security investigators believe it was on U.S. soil, near or in Laredo, Texas, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuela told the Associated Press.
The truck passed a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo at Interstate 35 on Monday, Cuellar and Mexico officials confirmed.  It was registered in Alamo, Texas, but had fake license plates and logos, Garduno said.
Officials in Mexico also posted a surveillance photo showing the driver smiling at the checkpoint during a trip to San Antonio that lasted more than two hours.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that state troops will set up additional truck checkpoints on highways, but did not say how many.  In April, Abbott blocked the 1,200-mile border with Texas for a week, requiring every truck entering the state to undergo additional checks as part of its ongoing battle with the Biden government over immigration policy.
Authorities were examining whether the truck had mechanical problems when it was left next to a railway line.  The driver was arrested after trying to disguise himself as one of the migrants, Garduno said.
Federal prosecutors have identified the driver as Homero Zamorano Jr., 45, who was charged with smuggling and resulting in his death.  Zamorano lives in the suburbs of Houston and hails from the border town of Brownsville, Texas, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio.
He faces the most serious charges along with Christian Martinez, 28, who is accused of conspiracy and allegedly contacted Zamorano to transport the migrants.
Martinez was arrested in East Texas and will be flown to San Antonio.  Zamorano was scheduled to make his first appearance in court on Thursday.  It was not immediately clear if any of the suspects had a lawyer.
Two other non-US men were also arrested on charges of illegal possession of weapons.  Prosecutors say investigators found the men at an address in San Antonio where the truck was registered.
Some of the more than a dozen people taken to hospitals were found to be suffering from brain damage and internal bleeding, according to Ruben Minutti, Mexico’s consul general in San Antonio.
Immigrants typically pay $ 8,000 to $ 10,000 to be transported across the border, loaded onto a tractor and driven to San Antonio, where they are transported in smaller vehicles to their final destinations in the United States, said Craig Larrabee. Special Agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio.
The death toll from Monday’s tragedy in San Antonio was the highest in a smuggling attempt in the United States, he said.  Four years ago, 10 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.
Temperatures in San Antonio approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) on Monday and those taken to hospital were hot and dehydrated, authorities said.
It would not take long for the temperature inside the truck to become deadly, said Jennifer Vanos, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who has researched child deaths in hot vehicles.
The tractor-trailer would probably be hot even before one gets in and because of the high humidity, lack of airflow and so many people inside, their sweat could not evaporate to cool their bodies and they would dehydrate quickly, he said. .  .
With little information about the victims, desperate families from Mexico and Central America were eagerly searching to talk about their loved ones.
Felicitos Garcia, who owns a grocery store in the remote San Miguel Huautla community in southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state, said his mother, Vasquez Guzman, who was treated in Texas, had gone to the state capital to learn more about her son’s condition. and where is his cousin, who is ignored.
“Life is hard here,” Garcia said.  “People survive by growing their own crops such as corn, beans and wheat.  Sometimes the earth gives and sometimes not when the rains are late.  There is nothing for people to have other resources.  “People live overnight.”
Recognizing the victims was painful because there were forged or stolen documents among the traps.
The Mexican foreign minister identified two people on Tuesday who were treated at a San Antonio hospital.  But it turned out that one of the ID cards shared on Twitter had been stolen last year in the southern state of Chiapas.
Haneydi Antonio Guzman, 23, was safe in a mountainous community more than 1,300 miles (2,092 kilometers) from San Antonio when she began receiving messages from her family and friends who were worried about her fate.
“I’m in the ID, but I’m not the person in the trailer and they say he’re being treated,” said Antonio Guzman.  “My relatives contacted me anxiously, asking where I was.”
In some parts of Mexico, trying to move to the United States is a tradition that most young people in cities with high immigration at least take into account.
“All young people start thinking about going (to the US) as soon as they turn 18,” said immigrant activist Carmelo Castaneda, who works with the non-profit Casa del Migrante.  “If there are no more visas, our people will continue to die.”
Verza and Sanchez reported from Mexico City.  Associated Press Writers Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas.  Elliot Spagat and Julie Watson in San Diego.  Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan?  Edgar H. Clemente in Villa Comaltitlan, Mexico.  Sonia D. Perez in Guatemala City and Marlon Gonzalez in Tegucigalpa, Honduras contributed to this exhibition.