Trafficking In Human Beings In Texas Us Works To Identify 53 Victims After Locating Dead Immigrants In San Antonio Truck

More than a day after the discovery of a suffocating trailer in San Antonio where dozens of migrants died after being abandoned in the heat, few victims’ identities have been made public, demonstrating the challenges authorities face in locating people smuggling across the border. The death toll rose to 53 on Wednesday after two more migrants died, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office. Forty of the victims were men and 13 women, he said. 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, who represents the area where the truck was abandoned. MORE: “It was very painful to see my sister die,” says survivor of US travel smuggling attempt The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio in what is believed to be the country’s deadliest smuggling incident on the US-Mexico border. 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 immigrants, Francisco Garduño, head of the National Immigration Institute of Mexico, said Wednesday. The driver was arrested after trying to pretend to be one of the migrants, Garduño said. Two other Mexicans have also been arrested, he said. The dead included 27 people from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, he said. One of the victims had no identity, Garduño said. RELATED: How America’s Most Deadly Smuggling Incident Happened in Victoria, Texas 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. With little information about the victims, desperate immigrant families from Mexico and Central America frantically searched for information about their loved ones. Several survivors were in critical condition with injuries such as brain damage and internal bleeding, according to Rubén 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 South Texas to match names and fingerprints and complete identities. The process is painful because between the traps are forged or stolen documents. SEE ALSO: “This is not the time to start creating fears:” The Ombudsman believes that open borders would stop extreme cases 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 identities 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 family and friends. There is no telephone signal there, but it has internet access. Journalists began appearing at her parents’ home in Escuintla – the address on her identity card that was stolen and found in the truck – waiting to find her anxious relatives. “I’m in the ID, but I’m not the person in the trailer and they say he was hospitalized,” said Antonio Guzman. “My relatives contacted me anxiously, asking where I was,” he said. “I told them I was fine, that I was at home and I made it clear on my Facebook page. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrad deleted his tweet acknowledging it without comment. The other victim Ebrard identified proved to be accurate. In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, San Miguel Huautla municipal officials traveled to the community of 32-year-old José Luis Vásquez Guzmán late Tuesday to find out if his mother wanted to travel to San Antonio to be with him at the hospital. . Manuel Velasco López, mayor of San Miguel Huautla, said a cousin was traveling with Vásquez Guzmán and is now missing. Another of his cousins, Alejandro Lopez, told Mexico’s Milenio television that their family worked in agriculture and construction and that they emigrated because “we have nothing but to weave hats, palm trees and handicrafts.” “Growing corn, wheat and beans is what we do in this area and that leads many of our people to immigrate and move to the United States,” he said. Miguel Barbosa, the governor of the neighboring state of Puebla, started an information battle in the town of Izucar de Matamoros on Tuesday when he said two of the dead were from there, although this has not been confirmed. In the heavily immigrant city, everyone wondered if their friends or neighbors were among the dead found in Texas. Attempting to move to the United States is such a tradition that most young people in the city at least take it into account. “All young people start thinking about going (to the US) when they turn 18,” said immigrant activist Carmelo Castañeda, who works with the non-profit Casa del Migrante. “If there are no more visas, our people will continue to die.” 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. U.S. lawmaker Henry Cuellar told the Associated Press on Wednesday that Homeland Security investigators believe the migrants boarded the truck in or around Laredo on U.S. soil, but have not confirmed it. He said the truck passed a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo at Interstate 35 on Monday. Before leaving for the two-hour trip to San Antonio, the truck was parked in South Texas Monday just north of the border, Garduño said. Authorities believe the truck had mechanical problems when it was left next to a railroad track in an area of ​​San Antonio surrounded by car debris crashing into a busy highway, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff. 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. Other Tragedies Happened Before Immigrants Arrived in the United States In December, more than 50 people were killed when a semi-trailer overturned on a highway in southern Mexico. During a vigil on Tuesday in a San Antonio park, many of the more than 50 people in attendance expressed grief and anger over the deaths and what they described as a damaged immigration system. Back in Puebla, farmer Juan Sánchez Carrillo, 45, was ill when he heard of the Texas deaths. He narrowly escaped death when he and his friends left to sleep in the rustling of immigrants in the mountains near Otay Mesa near San Diego. “For smugglers, we immigrants are not human beings,” said Sánchez Carrillo. “To them we are nothing but a commodity.”

Associated Press Writers John Lozano in San Antonio. Elliot Spagat in San Diego. Edgar H. Clemente in Villa Comaltitlan, Mexico. Sonia D. Perez in Guatemala City and Marlon Gonzalez in Tegucigalpa, Honduras contributed to this exhibition. Copyright © 2022 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.

title: “Trafficking In Human Beings In Texas Us Works To Identify 53 Victims After Locating Dead Immigrants In San Antonio Truck " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-05” author: “James Lewis”

More than a day after the discovery of a suffocating trailer in San Antonio where dozens of migrants died after being abandoned in the heat, few victims’ identities have been made public, demonstrating the challenges authorities face in locating people smuggling across the border. The death toll rose to 53 on Wednesday after two more migrants died, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office. Forty of the victims were men and 13 women, he said. 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, who represents the area where the truck was abandoned. MORE: “It was very painful to see my sister die,” says survivor of US travel smuggling attempt The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio in what is believed to be the country’s deadliest smuggling incident on the US-Mexico border. 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 immigrants, Francisco Garduño, head of the National Immigration Institute of Mexico, said Wednesday. The driver was arrested after trying to pretend to be one of the migrants, Garduño said. Two other Mexicans have also been arrested, he said. The dead included 27 people from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, he said. One of the victims had no identity, Garduño said. RELATED: How America’s Most Deadly Smuggling Incident Happened in Victoria, Texas 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. With little information about the victims, desperate immigrant families from Mexico and Central America frantically searched for information about their loved ones. Several survivors were in critical condition with injuries such as brain damage and internal bleeding, according to Rubén 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 South Texas to match names and fingerprints and complete identities. The process is painful because between the traps are forged or stolen documents. SEE ALSO: “This is not the time to start creating fears:” The Ombudsman believes that open borders would stop extreme cases 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 identities 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 family and friends. There is no telephone signal there, but it has internet access. Journalists began appearing at her parents’ home in Escuintla – the address on her identity card that was stolen and found in the truck – waiting to find her anxious relatives. “I’m in the ID, but I’m not the person in the trailer and they say he was hospitalized,” said Antonio Guzman. “My relatives contacted me anxiously, asking where I was,” he said. “I told them I was fine, that I was at home and I made it clear on my Facebook page. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrad deleted his tweet acknowledging it without comment. The other victim Ebrard identified proved to be accurate. In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, San Miguel Huautla municipal officials traveled to the community of 32-year-old José Luis Vásquez Guzmán late Tuesday to find out if his mother wanted to travel to San Antonio to be with him at the hospital. . Manuel Velasco López, mayor of San Miguel Huautla, said a cousin was traveling with Vásquez Guzmán and is now missing. Another of his cousins, Alejandro Lopez, told Mexico’s Milenio television that their family worked in agriculture and construction and that they emigrated because “we have nothing but to weave hats, palm trees and handicrafts.” “Growing corn, wheat and beans is what we do in this area and that leads many of our people to immigrate and move to the United States,” he said. Miguel Barbosa, the governor of the neighboring state of Puebla, started an information battle in the town of Izucar de Matamoros on Tuesday when he said two of the dead were from there, although this has not been confirmed. In the heavily immigrant city, everyone wondered if their friends or neighbors were among the dead found in Texas. Attempting to move to the United States is such a tradition that most young people in the city at least take it into account. “All young people start thinking about going (to the US) when they turn 18,” said immigrant activist Carmelo Castañeda, who works with the non-profit Casa del Migrante. “If there are no more visas, our people will continue to die.” 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. U.S. lawmaker Henry Cuellar told the Associated Press on Wednesday that Homeland Security investigators believe the migrants boarded the truck in or around Laredo on U.S. soil, but have not confirmed it. He said the truck passed a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo at Interstate 35 on Monday. Before leaving for the two-hour trip to San Antonio, the truck was parked in South Texas Monday just north of the border, Garduño said. Authorities believe the truck had mechanical problems when it was left next to a railroad track in an area of ​​San Antonio surrounded by car debris crashing into a busy highway, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff. 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. Other Tragedies Happened Before Immigrants Arrived in the United States In December, more than 50 people were killed when a semi-trailer overturned on a highway in southern Mexico. During a vigil on Tuesday in a San Antonio park, many of the more than 50 people in attendance expressed grief and anger over the deaths and what they described as a damaged immigration system. Back in Puebla, farmer Juan Sánchez Carrillo, 45, was ill when he heard of the Texas deaths. He narrowly escaped death when he and his friends left to sleep in the rustling of immigrants in the mountains near Otay Mesa near San Diego. “For smugglers, we immigrants are not human beings,” said Sánchez Carrillo. “To them we are nothing but a commodity.”

Associated Press Writers John Lozano in San Antonio. Elliot Spagat in San Diego. Edgar H. Clemente in Villa Comaltitlan, Mexico. Sonia D. Perez in Guatemala City and Marlon Gonzalez in Tegucigalpa, Honduras contributed to this exhibition. Copyright © 2022 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.