Fifty people have died after being abandoned in a tractor-trailer in the sweltering Texas heat, one of the worst tragedies to claim the lives of migrants smuggled between Mexico and the United States . More than a dozen people had been transported to hospitals, including four children.
A city worker heard a call for help on a side street in San Antonio shortly before 6 p.m. Monday and discovered the gruesome scene, police chief William McManus said. A few hours later, body bags were lying on the ground near the trailer.
Forty-six people were found dead at the scene, authorities said. Four others later died after being taken to hospitals, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, the county’s top elected official.
Among the dead were 39 men and 11 women, he said.
President Joe Biden has called the latest deaths “horrific and heartbreaking”. He said early intelligence indicates smugglers or human traffickers are to blame for the situation.
“Exploiting vulnerable people for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to prevent human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who seek to enter the United States between ports of entry,” he said in a statement.
Of the 16 people hospitalized with heat-related complications, 12 were adults and four were children, Fire Chief Charles Hood said. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated. No water was found in the semi-trailer, he said.
“They were suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion,” Hood said. It was a refrigerated semi-trailer, but there were no air conditioning parts visible on this platform. »
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the 46 who died had “families who were probably trying to find a better life.”
“This is nothing less than a horrific human tragedy,” Nirenberg said.
Migrant smuggling
Those in the trailer were part of an alleged attempt to smuggle migrants into the United States. The investigation is being led by the United States Homeland Security Investigative Service, McManus said.
Three people were arrested, but it was unclear whether they were linked to human trafficking, McManus said.
Large trucks emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid increased police presence at US borders in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.
Before that, people paid operators a small fee to get them across a largely unguarded border. The crossing became increasingly difficult after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Migrants were tricked into going to more dangerous terrain and paying thousands of dollars more.
Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck that was parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 migrants were found dead in an overheating truck southeast of San Antonio.
Heat is a serious hazard, especially when temperatures can rise dramatically inside vehicles.
Closed border
Some advocates have linked it to the border policies of the Biden administration. American Immigration Council policy director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote that he had feared such a tragedy for months.
“With the border closed as tightly as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have been pushed down increasingly dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is on the rise,” he wrote on Twitter.
Stephen Miller, a key designer of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, said “smugglers and human traffickers are mean and evil” and that the administration’s approach to border security rewards their actions.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican seeking re-election, was incisive in a Twitter post about the Democratic president: “These deaths are on Biden. They are the result of its murderous policies of open borders. »
More than two million migrants – mostly from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – have been deported under a rule in place since March 2020, amid the pandemic, which denies them a chance to seeking asylum, but encourages their repeated attempts, as there are no legal consequences for getting caught.
People from other countries, including Cuba, Nicaragua, and Colombia, are less frequently subject to the authority of Title 42 due to higher costs to send them home, strained diplomatic relations, and other considerations.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 557 deaths at the Southwest Border in a 12-month period ending Sept. 30, more than double the 247 deaths reported the previous year. This is the highest rate since it began to be tracked in 1998. Most are related to heat exposure.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not release a death toll for this year, but said the Border Patrol conducted 14,278 “search and rescue missions” over a seven-month period so far. in May, surpassing the 12,833 missions carried out during the previous 12-month period.