On this barren stretch of bush near the railroad tracks, a dangerous journey north for dozens of undocumented migrants – many of them Mexicans – ended up in the back of a burning tractor trailer, nearly 150 miles north of the U.S. border with Mexico.
“This is nothing but a horrific human tragedy,” said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg.
A local businessman described the back road where the semi-truck was abandoned as “la boca del lobo” in Spanish or “wolf’s mouth” because it was distant and black as tar.
The road runs parallel to Interstate 35, a major north-south route in the central United States for traffic and trade from the southern border. The Interstate runs from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minnesota, near the Canadian border. From San Antonio it winds north to Austin, Waco, Fort Worth and Dallas.
This is a route often used by smugglers at a time when a record number of migrants have been caught on the US-Mexico border.
“This sheds light on how dangerous human smuggling is,” said Craig Laraby, acting special agent for internal security investigations in San Antonio.
“In the past, smugglers were mom and dad,” Larabi told CNN. “Now they are organized and linked to cartels. So you have a criminal organization that doesn’t care about the safety of migrants. They are treated as commodities, not as people.”
The cry for help leads to “piles of bodies”
Shortly before 6pm on Monday, a worker at a nearby building heard a cry for help and alerted local authorities to the abandoned truck, according to San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus.
The doors of the huge trailer were partially open when the worker arrived. He saw the bodies inside, the boss said.
A total of 48 people died at the scene and two later died in hospitals, a federal law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity.
They were migrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
One body was found outside the trailer.
There were at least 22 Mexicans and two Hondurans in the truck, a federal law enforcement official said.
Seven Guatemalans are among the dead, and another Guatemalan is in critical condition in hospital, according to the country’s foreign minister.
“We don’t have to open a truck and see piles of bodies there,” San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters Monday. “None of us come to work imagining this.”
Heat stroke survivors were hot to the touch
These dangerous and sometimes fatal smuggling operations of people transporting people in crowded trailers and minibuses without air conditioning are common on the southern border.
In 2017, 10 migrants were killed and dozens were injured by heat-related conditions in a tug trailer found in San Antonio Walmart about three miles northeast of the latest incident. The driver of the truck was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in a federal prison.
On Tuesday, San Antonio resident Angelita Olvera left two colored crosses in honor of the victims near the site of the latest tragedy.
“I didn’t know them,” she told CNN about the victims. “They are sons, mothers, fathers and grandchildren.
Temperatures in San Antonio on Monday ranged from the high 90 to the low 100.
Sixteen survivors – 12 adults and four children – were rushed to local hospitals. Suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion, the patients were hot to the touch, according to Hood.
The trailer had no air conditioning. There was no sign of water inside. It is not clear how long the victims were dead.
“They were still there, waiting for help when we arrived … which means we were just too weak – weakened – to get out and help ourselves,” Hood told the survivors.
Felipe Betancourt Jr., co-owner of a transportation company in Alamo, Texas, told CNN that the semi-truck abandoned Monday used the same federal and state identification numbers as one of its vehicles. The truck in San Antonio is the same color as his red Volvo, but is not owned by his company.
Refrigerated semi-trucks are insulated and designed to maintain stable temperatures, Betancourt said, but “if it carries something hot inside, it will not allow heat to escape. Temperatures can reach 125-130 degrees when the doors are closed.”
On Monday, the truck passed a checkpoint north of Laredo, Texas, according to U.S. Representative Henry Cuelar, a Democrat whose vast area includes Laredo and San Antonio.
Homeland Security officials are investigating the death, along with local police.
Three people were detained by police away from the trailer, Chief McManus said. They are believed to be part of a smuggling plot, according to ICE.
Two men, Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendes and Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao, were federally charged with “possession of a weapon by a foreigner illegally in the United States” in connection with the incident, according to criminal appeals filed Monday in the District Court. of the United States for the Western District of Texas. It is unclear whether the two defendants were among the three previously detained.
Investigators at the scene traced the Texas license plate on the semi-truck and to a residence in San Antonio, the affidavit said. According to the complaints, the suspects were detained when they stopped moving after leaving the apartment, and a number of weapons were found in a car and a truck driven by the suspects.
“Brothers and sisters who died following their hope for a better life”
The victims are 39 men and 12 women.
So far, the forensic service has identified a potential 34 people, said Bexar County 1 Commissioner Rebecca Clay-Flores. Forensic doctors in neighboring counties have been asked to help because of the number of victims.
Consular officials from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras also vowed to help identify the victims and help the survivors.
“Too many lives have been lost as individuals – including families, women and children – embark on this dangerous journey,” Interior Minister Alejandro Mayorkas said on social media.
The Biden administration earlier this month launched what Majorcas called an “unprecedented” operation to disrupt human trafficking networks amid a growing number of migrants at the southern border.
President Joe Biden described Monday’s discovery as “horrifying and heartbreaking.”
“The exploitation of vulnerable people for profit is shameful, as is the political reputation surrounding the tragedy, and my administration will continue to do its utmost to stop human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who want to enter the United States between ports of entry. Said Biden.
Pope Francis called on Twitter to pray “for those brothers and sisters who died after hoping for a better life.”
650 died trying to cross the US-Mexico border last year
Rescues of migrants are increasing across the nation’s southern border.
Since October, more than 14,000 searches and rescue operations have been carried out along the border with Mexico, according to US customs and border guards – including those from dangerous water points. That’s more than 12,833 searches and rescue operations in fiscal 2021, with more than three months left in that fiscal year.
At least 650 people died trying to cross the US-Mexico border last year, the highest number since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration, a UN agency. Monday’s tragedy brought the total number of deaths in the first six months of the year to 290.
Helicopters buzzed over the empty stretch of road where the trailer was abandoned on Tuesday as authorities searched for other migrants who may have been in the truck.
Olvera, a resident who left crosses near the scene, recalls joining his neighbors in 2017 to pray for the 10 migrants who died in a hot tractor trailer parked at Walmart.
She has lived in Piedras Negras, Mexico, Olvera said, fighting back tears, and is all too aware of the poverty from which some migrants have died while fleeing.
This is a tragedy that has been repeated over the years. In 2003, 18 migrants between the ages of 7 and 91 were found dead in the back of a semi-truck in Texas with about 100 other people when temperatures rose above 100 degrees, investigators said. The driver in this case was initially sentenced to life in prison, but in 2011 he was sentenced to nearly 34 years in prison.
Rosa Flores, Rosalina Nives, Amir Vera, Joe Sutton, Amanda Musa, Travis Caldwell, Carolyn Sung, Michelle Watson, Carol Suarez, Kevin Liptak, Jason Hannah, Sharif Paget, Jen Dayton, Amanda Jackson and Steve Alma.
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