One of the most recent instances of human smuggling along the U.S.-Mexico border occurred on Monday in San Antonio, Texas, when the bodies of 46 dead migrants were found inside a tractor-trailer, according to local officials. A representative of the San Antonio Fire Department claimed that when the truck was discovered near to railway tracks in an isolated region on the southern outskirts of the city, they discovered “stacks of bodies”.
No children were among the dead, according to the department, but 16 additional people discovered inside the trailer were taken to hospitals for treatment of heat exhaustion and heat stroke, including four minors. According to San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood, “The patients that we saw were hot to the touch, they were suffering from heat stroke, and they were exhausted.” Despite being a refrigerated tractor-trailer, the rig’s air conditioning system was not evident to be in operation.
San Antonio, which is around 160 miles (250 km) from the Mexican border, experienced soaring temperatures on Monday that reached a high of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius) with significant humidity. According to William McManus, the city’s police chief, someone working in a nearby building heard a call for assistance and walked outside to look. The worker discovered the trailer doors just half open and upon further inspection discovered numerous dead bodies inside.
The involvement of the three people who were taken into custody after the incident is still unclear, but McManus claimed that it was the biggest occurrence of its sort in the city.
According to an ICE spokeswoman, the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations section is working with the local police to look into “an suspected people smuggling event.”
On Twitter, Mexico’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard referred to the migrants’ suffocation in the truck as the “tragedy in Texas” and said consular agents would visit the hospitals where the victims had been transferred to help “anyway possible.”
Ebrard said that two Guatemalans were at the hospital, and the country’s foreign ministry confirmed the report on Twitter by announcing that consular representatives were en route to the facility “to confirm if there are two Guatemalan minors there and what condition they are in.”
According to Jack Staton, a former senior employee with ICE’s investigative branch who resigned in December, the I-35 freeway near the location of the vehicle is a well-liked smuggling path because of the enormous volume of truck traffic that it carries from the Mexican border via San Antonio.
