At least 51 migrants die after trailer abandoned in San Antonio heat
SAN ANTONIO >> Desperate families of migrants from Mexico and Central America frantically sought word of their loved ones as authorities began the grim task Tuesday of identifying 51 people who died after being abandoned in a tractor-trailer without air conditioning in the sweltering Texas heat.
It was the deadliest tragedy to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico.
The driver of the truck and two other people were arrested, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas told The Associated Press.
He said the truck had passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo, Texas, on Interstate 35. He did not know if migrants were inside the truck when it cleared the checkpoint.
Investigators traced the truck's registration to a residence in San Antonio and detained two men from Mexico for possession of weapons, according to criminal complaints filed by the U.S. attorney's office. The complaints did not make any specific allegations related to the deaths.
The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio when a city worker heard a cry for help from the truck parked on a lonely back road and found the gruesome scene inside, Police Chief William McManus said. Hours later, body bags lay spread on the ground.
More than a dozen people — their bodies hot to the touch — were taken to hospitals, including four children. Most of the dead were males, he said.
The death count was the highest ever from a smuggling attempt in the United States, according to Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio.
“This is a horror that surpasses anything we've experienced before,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. “And it's sadly a preventable tragedy.”
President Joe Biden called the deaths “horrifying and heartbreaking.”
“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.
Authorities did not know the home countries of all of the migrants, nor how long they were abandoned on the side of the road.
At least 22 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. Families were reaching out to the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio looking for loved ones, an employee there said.
Attempts to cross the U.S. border from Mexico have claimed thousands of lives in both countries in recent decades.
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 onethird from a year ago.