People seeking to immigrate to the United States without documentation once more experience disaster.
Near San Antonio, Texas, where a heat wave has caused temperatures to rise as high as 39 degrees during the day, on this final Monday of June 2022, at least 42 bodies have been uncovered inside the trailer of an abandoned truck.
William McManus, the chief of police in the area, announced during a press conference that 16 more persons had been discovered alive and had been taken to nearby hospitals.
Charles Hood, the commander of the firefighters, also noted that children were among those transported to hospitals and that all of the cases were issues related to high temperatures.
How the Texas truck was found
According to one of the federal officials cited by “The Washington Post,” the truck was found by agents from a Department of Homeland Security division that specializes in cases of human trafficking.
Three people are currently being held as part of the investigation, which has been assigned to the agency.
According to the authorities at a news conference, the alert call from a worker in the vicinity of the truck’s abandoned location was received shortly before 6:00 in the afternoon.
When they arrived, they discovered the trailer’s doors only partially opened. The survivors couldn’t escape on their own because of the extreme heat they had to endure inside the trailer without access to water or air conditioning.
The place where the vehicle was found is around 250 kilometers from the border with Mexico, and Ruby Chavez, a local who went there with her husband after watching the story on television, told “The New York Times” that it is a frequent location for smugglers to drop off immigrants.
She said, “You can tell they just got there. “They are often seen carrying backpacks or begging for money or food. We hear there are children, which is sad.”
