Forty-Six Migrants found dead in the back of a tractor trailer in San Antonio, officials suspect human trafficking.
Mumbai: On Monday, officials from the San Antonio Fire Department found 46 dead bodies inside a tractor trailer along the US-Mexico border.
The San Antonio Fire Department that linked the event’s threads to the human trafficking lobby said on Monday that the force discovered “stacks of bodies” and no signs of water inside the tractor.
The tractor was located beside rail-road tracks in the city’s remote southern outskirt
The department said that sixteen people found inside the trailer were rushed for medical care to the hospitals on account of heatstroke and exhaustion, this included four minors.
The department said that no children were among the dead and commented, “The patients that we saw were hot to the touch, they were suffering from heat stroke, exhaustion,” San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told a news conference. “It was a refrigerated tractor-trailer but there was no visible working A/C unit on that rig.”
The temperatures in San Antonio bordering Mexico this Monday touched a scorching 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius) with high humidity.
City Police Chief William McManus reported that personnel who worked nearby responded to the cries of help from the trailer, and informed the department.
McManus reported that presently three people have been arrested following the event. He suspects the unfortunate event to be the largest of its kind in the city.
“An alleged human smuggling event” a spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement commented adding that its Homeland Security Investigations division was investigating the matter at top priority.
The event reports highlight the difficult challenge of controlling illegal migrant crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The matter has proven strenuous for U.S. President Biden, who came to power in 2021, January. The Republicans have critiqued Biden’s lax immigration policies, ever since the president rolled back Trump’s heavy-weight approach to the problem.
Foreign Minister of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard reported the event as the “tragedy of Texas”, and added that officials would visit the hospitalized and promised to offer help “however possible”.
The event will be looked into by the Honduran consulates in Houston and Dallas, a spokeswoman for the Honduran ministry told Reuters. Ebrard said that two Guatemalans were at the hospital, and the country’s foreign ministry confirmed the report on Twitter by announcing that consular representatives were en route to the facility “to confirm if there are two Guatemalan youngsters there and what condition they are in.”
According to Jack Staton, a former senior employee with ICE’s investigative branch who resigned in December, the I-35 freeway near the location of the vehicle is a well-liked smuggling path because of the enormous volume of truck traffic that it carries from the Mexican border via San Antonio.
“It was only a matter of time before a tragedy like this was going to happen again,” Staton added stating that it was only a matter of time in the timeline of such trafficking events that such of one magnitude was inevitable.
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