Migrant truck ‘passed US checks’
SAN ANTONIO: A tractor-trailer that ended up in San Antonio with more than 50 dead or dying migrants passed through a federal immigration checkpoint inside the United States without being inspected, a top Mexican official said on Wednesday.
The truck crossed the checkpoint, operated by the Border Patrol, shortly before 3pm local time on Monday as it drove north along Interstate 35 from the border region, the official, Francisco Garduño Yáñez, the head of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration, said at a news conference that featured images of the truck and its driver at the checkpoint.
The Mexican official also said that the rig had driven by a Border Patrol station in the town of Cotulla; that station does not operate a highway checkpoint.
The truck stopped roughly three hours later along a desolate road just off the highway, with the people inside either already dead or struggling to stay alive.
A young girl managed to climb out and cry for help.
“I didn’t get her name or think to ask where she came from,” said Roberto Quintero, who came upon the truck and called 911. “She just kept hanging on my arms, screaming, ‘Help me, help me,’ in Spanish.”
Officials said on Wednesday that at least 53 of the 64 people inside, men, women and some children who came from countries including Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, died from the extreme heat inside the truck, which did not have any working cooling system on a day that temperatures topped 38°C. Several others were still being treated in local hospitals.
A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Investigations declined to comment on how the tractor-trailer, which had Texas plates, smoothly passed through a federal checkpoint in Encinal, Texas, about 64 kilometres from the border.
The Border Patrol operates more than 100 checkpoints, most of them along highways and secondary roads that are 40 to 160 km from the southern and northern borders.