TRUCK CARRYING MIGRANTS PASSED THROUGH CHECKPOINT
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 3 p.m. 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 iming ages 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.
Officials said on Wednesday that at least 53 of the people inside — men, women and children who came from countries includMexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — died from the extreme heat inside the truck. Several others were still being treated in local hospitals.
A spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations declined to comment on how the tractortrailer, which had Texas plates, passed through a federal checkpoint in Encinal, Texas, about 40 miles from the border.
But current and former officials said that most drivers pass through without being subjected to a thorough inspection, both because of legal limits on police searches and the sheer volume of truck traffic. Roughly 20,000 trucks pass through the corridor from Laredo to San Antonio every day.
The Border Patrol operates more than 100 checkpoints, most of them along highways and secondary roads that are 25 to 100 miles from the southern and northern borders.
As vehicles approach a checkpoint, agents ask only some of them to stop, and typically ask occupants whether they are U.S. citizens or residents to identify people who are potentially deportable.