Reuters
Fifty individuals have been confirmed lifeless after a tractor-trailer was discovered deserted on the outskirts of San Antonio on Monday with “stacks of our bodies” inside, the Mexican authorities stated Tuesday.
The victims, discovered after temperatures within the space hit 103 levels Fahrenheit, included 22 Mexican nationals, seven Guatemalans, and two Hondurans, in response to Mexico’s international minister Marcelo Ebrard, who cited info offered to him by American authorities.
“The others are but to be recognized,” Ebrard added in a assertion shared on Twitter. “We're in mourning. Large tragedy. Mexico joins investigations within the U.S., coordinated with DHS.”
One other 16 individuals—together with 4 youngsters—had been taken to 4 hospitals with obvious warmth exhaustion and dehydration after authorities opened the trailer doorways on Monday.
Individuals pulled out of the broiling trailer had been “sizzling to the contact,” native hearth chief Charles Hood stated. “We’re not presupposed to open up a truck and see stacks of our bodies in there. None of us come to work imagining that,” he stated.
He added that whereas the automobile was designed to be refrigerated, the trailer had no working A/C unit or water inside.
Regulation enforcement was alerted to the tragedy when a metropolis employee heard cries for assist from the truck on Monday morning. Preliminary stories urged that 46 our bodies had been found on the website on a distant again street, however the toll now seems to have risen. The case is already one of many worst tragedies associated to individuals smuggling throughout the Mexico-U.S. border lately.
“That is nothing wanting a horrific human tragedy,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg stated, including that the lifeless had “households who had been doubtless looking for a greater life.”
William McManus, the chief of the San Antonio Police Division, stated three individuals had been detained in reference to the horrific discovery. He didn't say if the driving force who appeared to have deserted the truck was amongst these taken into custody. The tragedy is the deadliest case of migrant deaths within the metropolis’s historical past, McManus stated.
It’s additionally simply the most recent nightmare related to makes an attempt at mass crossings of the southern border. Final December, over 50 individuals died when one other trailer stuffed with migrants flipped on a street in southern Mexico. And in April 2021, 10 individuals died when a van carrying 29 migrants crashed in Texas. That tragedy got here simply weeks after 13 individuals misplaced their lives when an SUV carrying 25 individuals crashed exterior of San Diego.
The newest case is already being cashed in on for political point-scoring.
“These deaths are on Biden,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted late Monday. “They're a results of his lethal open border insurance policies. They present the lethal penalties of his refusal to implement the legislation.”