At least 46 people have been found dead in an abandoned lorry on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas.
According to a fire official, 16 people, including four children, were also taken to the hospital. The survivors were “hot to the touch” and suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion.
San Antonio, which is 250km (150 miles) from the US-Mexican border, is a major transit route for people-smugglers. Human traffickers often use lorries to transport undocumented migrants after meeting them in remote areas once they managed to cross into the United States.
San Antonio Mayor, Ron Nirenberg, disclosed that “They had families… and were likely trying to find a better life”, adding that “It’s nothing short of a horrific, human tragedy”.
San Antonio Fire Chief, Charles Hood, told reporters that emergency responders initially arrived at the scene at about 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) after responding to reports of a dead body. Hood said, “We’re not supposed to open up a truck and see stacks of bodies in there. None of us come to work imagining that”. He also added that the vehicle, which was abandoned by its driver, had no working air conditioning and there was no drinking water inside it.
San Antonio’s Climate
According to reports, San Antonio’s climate is blisteringly hot in the summer months, with temperatures there reaching 39.4C (103F) on Monday, June 27, 2022.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that two Guatemalans were among those taken to the hospital. The nationalities of the other victims were yet to be discovered. Meanwhile, three people are being held in custody and the investigation of the development has been handed over to federal agents. In addition, Mexican Consul General, Rubén Minutti, has been dispatched to the scene, while the consulate in San Antonio said it would provide “all the support” if Mexican citizens are among the dead.
US Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department took over the investigation, intimated that “Human smugglers are callous individuals who have no regard for the vulnerable people they exploit and endanger in order to make a profit”.
Texas’s Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, blamed US President, Joe Biden, for the deaths, describing them as a “result of his deadly open border policies”. Also, Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate running against Mr. Abbott, said the reports were devastating and called for urgent action to “dismantle human smuggling rings and replace them with expanded avenues for legal migration”.
Immigration is a contentious political issue in the United States, where in May 2022, a record of about 239,000 revealed that undocumented migrants were detained crossing into the country from Mexico, of which many were travelling along extremely risky and unsafe routes.
Fleeing for Safe Haven
US law enforcement officials are on track to exceed the record 1.73 million border arrests made in 2021, with large numbers of people continuing to cross from Central American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
In efforts to flee poverty and violence in Central America, many of the undocumented migrants ended up paying huge sums of cash to people-smugglers to get them across the US border. Over recent years, there were many similar examples of migrants perishing during their journey, but no single event was as deadly as what was discovered late at night on Monday, June 27, 2022.
After the tragedy was discovered, the Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, noted in a Tweet post saying, “Lord have mercy on them. They hoped for a better life”, adding that “Once again, the lack of courage to deal with immigration reform is killing and destroying lives”.
Speaking to the media from San Antonio, a local reporter, Matt Houston, said “It is our understanding right now that if this is a human smuggling incident, as it appears, it would be the deadliest of its kind in American history.” He said the risks faced by families crossing into the United States were formidable, and in recent days, the area has been struck by a heatwave.
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