Abbott orders truck inspections at border after migrant deaths
AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday ordered state police to resume inspecting trucks entering Texas from Mexico after 53 migrants died in a tractor-trailer abandoned near San Antonio.
Authorities said that two more people who were in the truck died Wednesday.
Three men have been arrested in connection with the tragedy, including the driver, who tried to slip away during the first chaotic minutes after the truck was found by pretending to be one of the survivors, a Mexican immigration official said Wednesday.
The driver and the other two men from Mexico remained in custody as the investigation continued into the nation’s deadliest smuggling episode on the U.S.Mexico border.
The truck had been packed with 67 people, from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, said Francisco Garduño, chief of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.
Mr. Abbott on Wednesday continued to blame President Joe Biden, saying the truck carrying Mexican and Central American migrants who died wasn’t inspected by Border Patrol agents because that federal agency lacks sufficient manpower.
The death toll among unauthorized immigrants crossing deserts or clambering into the back of trucks as temperatures soar will keep rising if Mr. Biden doesn’t act, Mr. Abbott warned.
“I urge the president, stop the loss of life,” said Mr. Abbott, a two-term Republican who is up for re-election this year. “You have the ability to stop people from losing their lives if you make it clear that no one can come across illegally.”
The White House said Tuesday the fact migrants are desperately taking chances by paying coyotes for illicit transportation proves that federal border enforcement is tightening.
On Wednesday, Mr. Abbott said he was ordering the Texas Department of Public Safety to create additional truck checkpoints at the Texas-Mexico border and to immediately begin inspecting more incoming trucks.
“They will begin targeting trucks like the one that was used when those people perished,” he said, referring to a stifling trailer in San Antonio where dozens of migrants died after being abandoned in the sweltering heat earlier this week.
In early April, Mr. Abbott ordered an initial round of state truck inspections on international bridges after declaring that the Biden administration had failed the country when it comes to border safety. At the time, the governor said DPS workers inspecting the commercial vehicles would disrupt efforts to smuggle people and drugs across the border.
But the stepped-up safety inspections, which were in addition to other inspections by the federal authorities, increased wait times at the border. Last spring, some truckers interviewed at the crossings said they had to wait two and three days to cross.
Amid negative publicity about rising prices of produce and manufacturing disruptions, Mr. Abbott agreed to ease the inspections in return for security commitments from the governors of all four Mexican states that border Texas: Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. The governors each met with Mr. Abbott to publicly explain their ongoing border security efforts.
Mr. Abbott continued to say, though, that the inspections might resume if migration increased.
Speaking at a news conference in Eagle Pass on Wednesday, Mr. Abbott said there has been a “meaningful rise” in illegal crossings this summer.
Migrant caravans are “disbanding to some extent,” but that doesn’t mean numbers of illegal crossings won’t keep rising, he said.