Federal authorities arrested three people on Tuesday in connection with a smuggling incident in southwestern San Antonio that killed 51 migrants, making it one of the deadliest episodes of its kind in recent history.
Homero Samorano, 45, was arrested after authorities said he abandoned the tractor’s trailer in a deserted area near Lakeland Air Force Base and fled the scene. Zamorano has addresses in Houston and the Rio Grande Valley.
“He was very targeted when he was arrested nearby and had to be taken to hospital,” said a police officer.
After Samorano’s arrest, authorities tracked the truck to a home in Block 100 of Arnold Drive in South Bexar County. They put the house under surveillance and saw two men – Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendes – leave in a truck, sources said.
When authorities stopped the truck, one of the men admitted he had a weapon in the vehicle. Police received a search warrant and searched Arnold Drive’s home.
SAN ANTONIO, TX – JUNE 27: In this aerial view, law enforcement officers are investigating a tractor trailer on June 27, 2022 in San Antonio, Texas. At least 46 people believed to be migrant workers from Mexico were reportedly found dead in an abandoned tractor trailer. More than a dozen victims were found alive, suffering from heat stroke and taken to local hospitals. (Photo by Jordan Vonderhaar / Getty Images)
Jordan Vonderhaar, Stringer / Getty Images
The two men were arrested on suspicion of possessing firearms while in the country illegally. They were detained without bail after a brief hearing in federal court on Tuesday.
Samorano could appear in federal court on Wednesday on charges of human trafficking. He has a long criminal history.
Craig Laraby, acting special agent in charge of internal security investigations in San Antonio, said the death toll from Monday’s human smuggling incident made it “the worst we’ve seen in the United States.”
“Organizations for (human smuggling) are becoming more violent – they don’t care about people,” he said. “They don’t consider them human. They consider them a commodity. “
The 51 migrants from Mexico and Central America were found in an abandoned tug trailer that could accommodate about 100 people. Another 11 people were rescued from the trailer and hospitalized, including a teenage boy who was in critical condition at University Hospital.
The dead were 39 men and 12 women. Twenty-two are from Mexico, seven from Guatemala and two from Honduras, said Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. The others are still being identified.
“We are devastated by the news,” said Cesar Espinoza, an immigrant advocate for FIEL Houston, an immigrant rights organization. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time, and unfortunately it will not be the last time this happens, as long as we do not have a way for people to migrate safely to the United States.”
A cloned truck?
Details continued to come out on Tuesday. The doomed migrants were covered in meat spices to mask their odor, law enforcement officials said, and were crammed into a semi-truck that had been “cloned” to look like a legal truck.
On ExpressNews.com: Death toll rises to 50 in trafficking tragedy in southwestern San Antonio
According to two law enforcement officials, the truck was traveling from Laredo up Highway 35 to San Antonio. With Interstate Highway 10 running from east to west and Interstate Highway 35 from south to north, San Antonio is a major crossroads for human trafficking.
The Volvo truck, a red tractor with a large white semi-trailer, was found around 5:50 p.m. Monday night after workers nearby heard cries for help and went to the tractor’s trailer to investigate.
One person was outside the trailer lying on the ground. Workers opened the doors and found dozens of bodies stacked inside, officials said.
The truck, which was traced to a transport company based in the border town of Alamo, was cloned, its owners said. Smuggling groups and cartels often copy legitimate vehicles for use at illegal border crossings – to the point of creating fake school buses with mannequins standing as passengers.
The owners of Betancourt Trucking and Harvesting – Felipe Betancourt Sr. and his son Felipe Jr. – said someone had cloned their truck with the same color and ID numbers from the Federal Department of Transportation and DOT in Texas. However, the cloned truck does not bear the Betancourt logo as their company vehicles.
“Ours is sitting right here,” Felipe Jr. said on the phone. “My truck doesn’t have a side window like the one in San Antonio … The one in San Antonio is not our trailer.”
On ExpressNews.com: Biden says fight against human trafficking will intensify after deaths of migrants in San Antonio
He said his father started the business in 2007 and bought the truck in 2020. He said their truck was transporting grain from Harlingen to Progresso.
At other events, many of the people found in the truck were covered in spice steaks, a law enforcement official said Tuesday, presumably in an attempt to mask their odors as smugglers transported them.
Timothy Tubbs, who is retiring as deputy special agent in charge of internal security investigations in Laredo, said smugglers typically use spices to aid their smuggling operations.
“Dogs are trained for several things. Some are trained to smell money. “Some are trained to smell drugs, weapons, and some dogs are trained to smell human beings,” Tabs said. “They will put spices on them to mask their aroma so that they can pass through the border checkpoint.”
Victims, survivors
Police were called for the first time at the scene, on Quintana Road near Lakeland Air Force Base – a deserted area overshadowed by illegally dumped garbage, with at least one rescue yard nearby – around 5:50 p.m. Monday.
The first responders arrived around 6pm, opened the doors and found dozens of bodies inside.
“It was covered with bodies,” McManus said Tuesday. It was like nothing no one had ever seen before.
Fire chief Charles Hood said many of the survivors suffered from heat stroke and heat exhaustion. He said they were “hot to the touch” and “too weak to get out and help each other”, adding that it was not clear how long they had been in the tractor’s trailer.
Temperatures in San Antonio reached nearly 100 degrees on Monday. Hood said the back of the facility was cooled, but no air conditioning was visible when emergency personnel entered.
Paramedics used a 12-lead ECG, a standard tool used by the EMT to screen patients for cardiac activity, but no such activity was found among the 46 dead.
They were pronounced dead on the spot. Five more died at hospitals in San Antonio on Tuesday.
On ExpressNews.com: Mexican president criticizes border security and human trafficking over migrant deaths in San Antonio
Alex Salgado with Fuerza Catracha, a group working with Hondurans in the United States, said Honduran consuls are coming to San Antonio.
He attended a meeting of immigrant advocates and non-profit leaders on Tuesday and said he had been told that the dead were partially identified with documents they had with them, not with DNA. There is speculation that some of the people identified as Mexican may have had false documents that falsely identified them as Mexican citizens.
“Some of those identified as Mexicans may be from Honduras or elsewhere,” Salgado said.
Bexar County Commissioner Rebecca Clay-Flores, whose area on the South Side includes the area where the truck was found, said a 23-year-old Guatemalan woman being treated at a university hospital was in critical condition and a teenager in critical condition.
Clay Flores said 34 of the bodies had been “potentially identified”. But she said a Beksar County court clerk was exhausted from the tragedy.
“Due to the large number of victims last night, we turned to neighboring counties for help and their medical courts,” Clay-Flores said.
Clay Flores advised those who fear a loved one may have been on the tractor’s trailer to call the Guatemalan consulate at 956-800-7351.
District 4 counselor Adriana Rocha Garcia, whose area covers the area where the migrants were found, said her staff coordinates with local non-profit and humanitarian groups to support survivors and victims’ families.
“Families did not know or probably still do not know if their loved ones are dead,” Rocha Garcia said. “All they wanted was a better life. You can’t blame them for that. “
Border crossings
Border officials report a record number of arrests of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, as people from Central America and around the world arrive, often fleeing violence and poverty, in part due to deteriorating conditions caused by from COVID-19. pandemic.
There is human smuggling …
Add Comment