At least 42 migrants were found dead in a tugboat trailer Monday in San Antonio, Texas, said Gov. Greg Abbott, what appears to be one of the deadliest recent incidents of human smuggling along the U.S. border. and Mexico.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard called the strangulation of migrants in the truck a “Texas tragedy” on Twitter and said the local consulate was on its way to the scene, although the nationality of the victims had not been confirmed.
A U.S. official told the Associated Press that 15 others in the truck were taken to hospitals in the San Antonio area. He said on condition of anonymity because the information was not allowed to be made public. A San Antonio firefighter later said children were among those taken to hospital.
The truck was found next to the railway tracks in a remote area on the southern outskirts of the city, local television KSAT reported.
San Antonio police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Spectators stand near the place where the bodies were found in the vehicle. (Eric Gay / Associated Press)
This may be the deadliest tragedy among the thousands who have died trying to cross the US border from Mexico in decades. Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped in a truck parked at Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 migrants were found in an exiled truck southeast of San Antonio.
Large platforms emerged as a popular method of smuggling in the early 1990s amid a rise in U.S. border services in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, which were then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.
Previously, people paid small fees to operators to drive them across a largely unguarded border. As the passage became exponentially more difficult after the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, migrants were led through more dangerous terrain and paid thousands of dollars more.
Temperatures in San Antonio, about 250 kilometers from the Mexican border, rose to a high of 39 degrees on Monday in high humidity.
Add Comment