At least 46 bodies were discovered in an abandoned truck outside of San Antonio, Texas.
A fire official reported that 16 individuals, including four children, were taken to the hospital.
The survivors were suffering from heat stroke and heat fatigue and were “hot to the touch.”
People smugglers use San Antonio, which is 250 kilometers (150 miles) from the US-Mexico border, as a significant transit route.
Human traffickers frequently utilize trucks to transfer unauthorized migrants after meeting them in rural regions in the United States.
“They undoubtedly had families and were seeking a better life,” said San Antonio’s mayor, Ron Nirenberg. It is nothing less than a terrible human tragedy.
Charles Hood, commander of the San Antonio fire department, informed reporters that first responders arrived at the area around 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) in response to reports of a body.
“We shouldn’t be able to enter a vehicle and find piles of bodies inside. None of us arrive at work with that in mind “he remarked.
He noted that the vehicle, whose driver had abandoned it, lacked functioning air conditioning and contained no potable water.
Monday’s high temperature in San Antonio, Texas was 39.4 degrees Celsius (103 degrees Fahrenheit), and it is believed that the victims died from heat exhaustion and dehydration.
Marcelo Ebrard, the foreign minister of Mexico, stated that two Guatemalans were among those hospitalized. The nationality of the remaining victims was first unclear.
Three individuals are being detained, and the investigation has been turned over to federal officials.
Consul General Rubén Minutti has been deployed to the area, and the consulate in San Antonio has stated that it will provide “all help” if any Mexican citizens are among the deceased.
Edward Reyna, a security guard at a nearby lumber yard, was not startled to hear the news when he reported for his night job. He stated that he had lost count of the number of times he had witnessed migrants jumping from the train that passes directly by where the truck was discovered.
Mr. Reyna stated, “I figured someone was going to get harmed sooner or later.” The cartels responsible for their importation do not care about them.
This story has already occurred in San Antonio, but not on this scale. In 2017, ten deceased immigrants were discovered in a similar tractor-trailer in front of a Walmart on the city’s south side.
The extreme south side of San Antonio is a corridor with two major routes that connect the city to Texas border communities.
In this area of San Antonio, mostly rural areas, a few junkyards, and a few expanding neighborhoods make it easy for a truck of this size to go unnoticed – until it doesn’t.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department has assumed responsibility for the probe, stated, “Human smugglers are heartless individuals who abuse and imperil vulnerable people for profit.”
Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, attributed the fatalities to US Vice President Joe Biden’s “deadly open border policies.”
Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate running against Mr. Abbott, described the reports as “devastating” and demanded immediate action to “dismantle human smuggling gangs and replace them with increased legal migration pathways.”
Immigration is a difficult political subject in the United States, where in May a record number of 239,000 undocumented migrants were apprehended attempting to enter the country from Mexico, with many taking highly dangerous and hazardous routes.
Large numbers of people continue to cross from Central American nations such as Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, putting US law enforcement officials on track to surpass the record 1.73 million border arrests made in 2021.
Many undocumented migrants, fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, pay large sums of money to people smugglers to cross the US border.
In the past several years, there have been numerous instances of migrants perishing during their voyage, but none as tragic as what was uncovered on Monday.
Gustavo Garcia-Siller, the Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, tweeted following the discovery of the tragedy: “Pity them, Lord. They anticipated a better life.”
He continued, “Once again, the lack of guts to address immigration reform is taking and ruining lives.”
Matt Houston, a KENS5 local reporter in San Antonio, told that, if this is indeed a people-smuggling incident, it would be the bloodiest of its sort in American history.
He stated that the dangers families confront when entering the United States are severe, and that the region has been experiencing a heatwave in recent days.
