The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio in an abandoned tractor-trailer. Authorities believe the truck had mechanical problems when it was left next to a railroad track surrounded by car debris hitting a busy highway, said Judge Nelson Wolff of Bexar County, Texas, where the truck was left. According to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, 40 of the victims were men and 13 were women. Officials had possible identifications of 37 of the victims as of Wednesday morning, pending verification with authorities in other countries. “It is a tedious, tedious, sad, difficult process,” said Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores. Few identities of the victims have been made public so far, with authorities facing challenges in locating people crossing the border illegally. Crosses and candles have been left at the site where the tractor with migrants inside was discovered. (Chandan Khanna / AFP / Getty Images) Victims were found without any identity documents and in one case a stolen identity card. Remote villages lack telephone service to contact family members and determine the whereabouts of missing migrants. Fingerprint data must be shared and mapped by different governments. More than a dozen people were taken to hospitals, including four children. Three people have been arrested. The truck, which was registered in Alamo, Texas but had fake license plates and logos, was carrying 67 migrants, Francisco Garduno, head of the National Immigration Institute of Mexico, said Wednesday. The driver was arrested after trying to pretend to be one of the migrants, Garduno said. Two other Mexicans have also been arrested, he said.
The dead come from at least 4 countries
The dead included 27 people from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, he said. The country of origin of one of the victims is unknown, Garduno said. With little information about the victims, desperate immigrant families from Mexico and Central America frantically searched for information about their loved ones. Danielle Lopez holds a cauldron of incense during the vigil Wednesday afternoon in San Antonio, Texas. (Kaylee Greenlee Beal / Reuters) Several survivors were in critical condition with injuries such as brain damage and internal bleeding, according to Ruben Minutti, Mexico’s consul general in San Antonio. The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry announced late Tuesday that it had confirmed two Guatemalan patients and was working to locate three possible Guatemalans among the dead. The Honduran Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was trying to confirm the identities of four of the dead who carried Honduran papers. Eva Ferufino, a spokeswoman for the Honduran Foreign Ministry, said her office was working with the Honduran consulate in southern Texas to match names and fingerprints and complete identities. The process is painful because between the traps are forged or stolen documents. Immigrants typically pay $ 8,000 to $ 10,000 to be transported across the border and loaded onto a tractor-trailer 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.
Asylum procedures are currently at an impasse
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. Immigrants have been deported more than two million times in total under a health mandate invoked by the Trump administration in March 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic began to rage. The Title 42 principle denies migrants the opportunity to seek asylum and be channeled into the refugee system, but encourages repeated efforts because there are no legal consequences for their arrest. An attempt by the Biden government to end Title 42 in May has been blocked by the courts following legal action by 24 states that opposed the plan. Title 42 is one of the two surviving Trump-era policies to prevent asylum at the border, along with the Immigration Protection Protocols (MPPs), better known as “Staying in Mexico.” The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the spring about the program the Biden administration is trying to end and is expected to rule on the case at any time.
