SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Fifty people died after being abandoned in a tractor-trailer in the sweltering Texas heat, one of the worst tragedies to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico to the U.S. More than a dozen people had been taken to hospitals, including four children.
A city worker heard a cry for help from the truck on a San Antonio back road shortly before 6 p.m. Monday and discovered the gruesome scene, Police Chief William McManus said. Hours later, body bags lay spread on the ground near the trailer and bodies remained inside as authorities responded.
Forty-six people were found dead at the scene, authorities said. Four more later died after being taken to hospitals, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, the county’s top elected official,
Among the dead were 39 males and 11 females, he said.
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said those who died had “families who were likely trying to find a better life.”
“This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy,” Nirenberg said.
Attempts to cross the U.S. border from Mexico have claimed thousands of lives in both countries in recent decades.
President Joe Biden called the latest deaths “horrifying and heartbreaking.” He said initial reports were that smugglers or human traffickers were to blame.
“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,” he said in a statement.
The home countries of all of the migrants and how long they were abandoned on the side of the road were not immediately known.
Twenty-two 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.
South Texas has long been the busiest area for illegal border crossings. Migrants ride in vehicles through Border Patrol checkpoints to San Antonio, the closest major city, from which point they disperse across the United States.
Wolff said Tuesday that authorities believe the truck came from Laredo, a border city about 150 miles (241 kilometer) south.
“They had just parked it on the side of the road,” Wolff said. “Apparently had mechanical problems and left it there. The sheriff thinks it came across from Laredo.”
Officials were asking neighboring counties to help with the number of bodies, he said.
San Antonio has been a recurring scene of tragedy and desperation in recent years involving migrants in the back of semitrailers.
