by Ashifa Kassam and Ramon Antonio Vargas
Mexican foreign minister mourns ‘huge tragedy’ as US investigates effort to smuggle people across border
Fifty suspected migrants were found dead and at least a dozen others were hospitalized after being found inside an abandoned tractor-trailer rig on Monday on a remote back road in south-west San Antonio, officials have said.
The discovery in Texas may prove to be the deadliest tragedy among thousands of people who have died attempting to cross the US border from Mexico in recent decades.
It prompted Joe Biden to issue a statement Tuesday pledging to “continue to do everything possible to stop” smugglers who work to sneak people into the US without permission in exchange for pay, often with deadly results.
“This incident underscores the need to go after the multibillion-dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants and leading to far too many innocent deaths,” the president’s statement said.
A person who works at a building nearby was alerted by a cry for help shortly before 6pm on Monday, police chief William McManus said. Officers arrived to find a body on the ground outside the trailer and a partially opened gate to the trailer, he said.
Initially, authorities said 46 of those inside the trailer were dead. Four others died later after being taken to the hospital, bringing the toll to 50 – 39 males and 11 females, said Nelson Wolff, the top official in Bexar county, which includes San Antonio.
Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said on Tuesday that among the dead were at least 22 from Mexico, seven from Guatemala, and two from Honduras.
The nationalities of at least 19 others who died had not been identified as of Tuesday morning, Ebrard said. He added: “We’re in mourning. A huge tragedy. Mexico will join investigations in the US,” which are being coordinated by the US Department of Homeland Security.
At first, 16 of those in the trailer were taken to the hospital with heat-related illnesses, of which 12 were adults and four were children, said fire chief Charles Hood. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water or air conditioning was found in the trailer, he said.
“We’re not supposed to open up a truck and see stacks of bodies in there,” Hood told reporters. “None of us come to work imagining that.”
Relaying information from the Mexican consul in San Antonio, Ebrard said the survivors had been taken to four hospitals around the city.
Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, on Tuesday offered his condolences to the affected families, but did not address reports that Guatemalans were among the victims. “It is unforgivable that innocent lives continue to be lost to migrant smuggling!” Giammattei wrote on Twitter, calling for tougher penalties for traffickers preying on people crossing the US border in hopes of finding a better, more comfortable life.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, told reporters that “this tragedy of course results from poverty, of desperation”. He also promised the families of the Mexicans found dead in the trailer that the government would help them repatriate their bodies.
A homeland security department spokesperson said authorities detained three people near the trailer who were suspected of plotting to smuggle Monday’s dead and wounded into the US. No other details were immediately available about the charges that the three suspects may be facing.
The tragedy took place as San Antonio sweltered through June temperatures that ranked among the highest on record. A law enforcement official told the Texas Tribune that many of the people found inside the vehicle appeared to have been sprinkled with steak seasoning, in what may have been an attempt to disguise the smuggling effort.
A couple living nearby who came to the scene to pray told the New York Times said the site was known as a “drop-off spot” for migrants. “You can tell they just get here,” Ruby Chavez told the paper. “We see them with backpacks or asking for food or money.”
The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Twitter he was “heartbroken by the tragic loss of life” in San Antonio.
He said local police and border patrol officers were helping US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) investigate the deaths.
Ebrard said the Mexican consul was en route to the site on Monday.
Governor Greg Abbott said in a tweet the people were found in the back of a truck and blamed the deaths on political division and how borders are secured.
The mayor of San Antonio, Ron Nirenberg, said the 46 who died had “families who were likely trying to find a better life”.
“This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy,” Nirenberg said.
The city has been the scene of previous mass deaths of migrants. Ten people died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck that was parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 others were found in a sweltering truck south-east of San Antonio.
Big rigs emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid a surge in US border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, which were then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.
Before that, people paid small fees to mom-and-pop operators to get them across a largely unguarded border. As crossing became exponentially more difficult after the 2001 terror attacks in the US, individuals were led through more dangerous terrain and paid thousands of dollars more.
Heat poses a serious danger, because temperatures can rise steeply inside vehicles. Weather in the San Antonio area was mostly cloudy on Monday, but temperatures approached 100F (38C).
Photos posted to Twitter by a KSAT reporter showed multiple police vehicles and ambulances surrounding a large truck.
Immigration campaigners drew a direct link between the tragedy and the Biden administration’s border policies. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, said he had been dreading such a tragedy for months.
“With the border shut as tightly as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have been pushed into more and more dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is a way up,” he wrote on Twitter.
Last year saw at least 650 people die as they attempted to cross the US-Mexico border – the highest figure on record since the International Organization for Migration (IOM) began documenting deaths in 2014.
The incident came as the community continued to mourn the 21 lives lost in the 24 May shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, some 80 miles away, said the local archbishop, Gustavo García-Siller. “We are still holding in prayers our people in Uvalde; now, we are told that over 40 migrant people, our people, have died here in San Antonio,” he wrote on Twitter.
Pope Francis expressed his sorrow on Tuesday over the deaths and those at the border between Spain and Morocco. At least 23 people died on Friday after some 2,000 migrants stormed the heavily fortified border of the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla.
“I sorrowfully heard the news of the tragedy of the migrants in Texas and Melilla,” he said on Twitter.
“Let us pray together for these brothers and sisters who died following their hope of a better life; and for ourselves, may the Lord might open our hearts so these misfortunes never happen again.”
