50 migrants die after trailer abandoned in San Antonio
SAN ANTONIO — Fifty people died after being abandoned in a tractor-trailer without air conditioning in the sweltering Texas heat, one of the worst tragedies to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico. More than a dozen people — their bodies hot to the touch — were taken to hospitals, including four children.
A city worker heard a cry for help from the truck parked on a lonely San Antonio back road late Monday afternoon and discovered the gruesome scene inside the trailer, Police Chief William Mcmanus said. Hours later, body bags lay spread on the ground.
Forty-six people were found dead at the scene, authorities said. Four more later died after being taken to hospitals, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, the county’s top elected official,
Among the dead were 39 males and 11 females, he said.
Attempts to cross the U.S. border from Mexico have claimed thousands of lives in both countries in recent decades.
President Joe Biden called the latest deaths “horrifying and heartbreaking.” He said initial reports were that smugglers or human traffickers were to blame.
“Exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to stop human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who are seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry,” Biden said in a statement.
The home countries of all of the migrants and how long they were abandoned on the side of the road were not immediately known.
Twenty-two were from Mexico, seven from Guatemala and two from Honduras, Roberto Velasco Álvarez, head of the North America department in Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department, said on Twitter.
U.S. border authorities are stopping migrants more often on the southern border than at any time in at least two decades. Migrants were stopped nearly 240,000 times in May, up by one-third from a year ago.
Comparisons to pre-pandemic levels are complicated because migrants expelled under a public health authority known as Title 42 face no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. Authorities say 25% of encounters in May were with people who had been stopped at least once in the previous year.
Wolff said Tuesday that authorities believe the truck came from Laredo, a border city about 150 miles south.
“They had just parked it on the side of the road,” Wolff said. “Apparently had mechanical problems and left it there. The sheriff thinks it came across from Laredo.”