A friend’s simple advice to stay close to the door may have saved Jenifer Yulisa Cardona Thomas from the deadly fate that befell 53 other migrants when they were abandoned, trapped in a sweltering semi-trailer last week on the edge of San Antonio.
Speaking by phone from her hospital bed on Monday, the 20-year-old woman from the Guatemalan capital said it was already hot on June 27 when she left the warehouse on the Texas side of the Mexican border where she had been waiting and boarded in the back of the trailer.
Minor Cardona shows a cell phone photo of his daughter, Jenifer Yulisa Cardona Thomas, at the hospital during a visit in Guatemala City, Monday, July 4, 2022. Oliver de Ross/AP
She said the smugglers confiscated their cellphones and covered the floor of the trailer with what she said was chicken broth powder, apparently to repel any dogs at the checkpoints. As she sat crammed into the stuffy trailer with dozens of others, the powder stung her skin.
Remembering her friend’s warning to stay near the door where it would be cooler, Cardona Thomas shared the advice with another friend she found on the trip.
“I told a friend that we shouldn’t go to the back and we should stay close to (the entrance), in the same place, not moving,” said Cardona Thomas, who is being treated at San Antonio’s Metropolitan Methodist Hospital. This friend also survived.
As the truck continued forward, making additional stops to pick up more migrants, people began to crowd near the door like Cardona Thomas. She had no way of keeping track of time.
“People were screaming, some were crying. “Mostly women were yelling for him to stop and open the doors because it was so hot they couldn’t breathe,” she said, still struggling to speak after being intubated at the hospital.
She said the driver or someone else in the cab yelled back that “we were about to arrive, 20 minutes, six minutes to go.”
“People asked for water, some had run out, others were carrying,” she said.
The truck continued to stop every now and then, but just before she passed out, it was moving slowly. She woke up in the hospital.
The driver and three others were arrested and charged by US prosecutors.
Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said 20 Guatemalans died in the incident, 16 of whom have been positively identified. Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro said he hoped the first bodies would be repatriated this week.
Cardona Thomas said the truck’s destination that day was Houston, although it ended up headed for North Carolina.
“She didn’t have a job and asked me if I would support her” to immigrate to the U.S., her father Minor Cardona said Monday in Guatemala City, where the family lives. He said he knew of other cases of children who simply left without telling their families and ended up disappearing or dying, so he decided to support her.
He paid $4,000 to a smuggler – less than half the total cost – to get her to the US. She left Guatemala on May 30, traveling by car, bus and finally the semi into Texas.
“I didn’t know she was going to be traveling in a trailer,” he said. “She told us she would be on foot. It seems at the last minute the smugglers decided to put her in the trailer, along with two other friends who survived. One of them is still in critical condition.”
Cardona maintained contact with her daughter until the morning of June 27. Her last message to him on Monday was at 10:28 a.m. in Guatemala or 11:28 a.m. in Texas. “Leaving in an hour,” she wrote.
It wasn’t until late that night that Cardona Thomas’ family learned of the abandoned trailer. It was two more days before relatives in the United States confirmed that she was alive and hospitalized.
“We cried so much,” Cardona said. “I even thought where we would wake her up and bury her. She is a miracle.”
Minor Cardona, father of Yennefer Yulisa Cardona Thomas, listens to a question during an interview in Guatemala City, Monday, July 4, 2022. Oliver de Ross/AP
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