Air Conditioner Not Working, 46 Migrants Found Dead In Overheated Truck In Texas

Illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Tony Webster)

JAKARTA - The bodies of 46 migrants were found in a truck trailer in San Antonio, Texas, on Monday, one of the deadliest people-smuggling incidents on the United States' border with Mexico.

A San Antonio Fire Department official said they found a "pile of bodies" and no sign of water in the truck, which was found next to a railroad track in a remote area on the southern outskirts of the city.

Sixteen other people found in the trailer were taken to hospital with heatstroke and exhaustion, including four minors, but no children were among the dead, the department said.

"The patients we saw were hot to the touch, they were suffering from heat stroke, exhaustion," San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told a news conference.

"It was a refrigerated tractor-trailer but there was no working AC unit on the rig."

Temperatures in San Antonio, which is about 160 miles (250 km) from the Mexican border, soared to as high as 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius) on Monday with high humidity.

Meanwhile, City Police Chief William McManus said someone working in a nearby building heard cries for help and came out to investigate. Workers found the trailer door partially open and looked inside, finding a number of bodies.

McManus said this was the largest incident of its kind in its region. Three people were detained after the incident, although their involvement is unclear.

Separately, a spokesman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said the Homeland Security Investigations division was investigating "suspected people smuggling" in coordination with local police.

The incident once again highlights the challenges of controlling migrant crossings on the United States' border with Mexico, which have reached record highs.

The issue is proving difficult for Democratic President Joe Biden, who has vowed to reverse some of the hardline immigration policies of his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump, who criticized Biden's border strategy ahead of midterm congressional elections in November.

In Mexico, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard called the incident of migrants in the truck a "tragedy in Texas", saying consular officials would go to the hospital where the victims were taken to help "as much as possible."

A spokesman for the Honduran Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters the country's consulates in Houston and Dallas would investigate the incident.

Ebrard said two Guatemalans were being treated in hospital and the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Twitter that consular officials visited the hospital where the victim was rushed, "to verify if there were two Guatemalan minors there and in what condition they were."

To note, the I-35 highway near where the truck was found extends from San Antonio to the Mexican border, a smuggling corridor popular because of the volume of truck traffic, according to Jack Staton, a former senior official with ICE's investigative unit who retired in December.

Staton said migrants have been regularly intercepted in the area since the 2017 incident. "It's only a matter of time before a tragedy like this will happen again," he said.

In July 2017, 10 migrants died after being transported in a trailer found by San Antonio police in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The driver, James Matthew Bradley, Jr., was sentenced the following year to life in prison for his role in a smuggling operation.