Mexican government immigration officials found a group of 150 migrants locked inside a tractor-trailer headed to the Texas-Mexico border. Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents coordinated with the Mexican authorities to rescue the migrants from the life-threatening situation.
Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens tweeted photos showing a group of migrants huddled inside a tractor-trailer in Mexico. The sector worked with Mexican officials to find and stop the truck headed toward the U.S. border.
“This has proven to be a deadly tactic that smugglers use,” Chief Owens said in the tweet. “Luckily no one in this large group needed medical assistance.”
The tactic of loading migrants into these potential death traps is not new. Breitbart Texas reports extensively on the use by Mexican cartel-connected smugglers to move migrants into the U.S. interior. These smuggling efforts can have deadly consequences.
In June, a worker found 48 migrants dead in a tractor-trailer smuggling incident in San Antonio, Breitbart reported. Five additional migrants died in the following days from being locked in the sweltering heat in the trailer.
Among the dead were teenage migrants, KSAT reported. It is not known if they were accompanied or not. Four minors survived and were taken to area hospitals, officials reported in a Monday night press conference.
Earlier that month, local police agents found two migrants dead in a tractor-trailer loaded with 111 migrants, Breitbart Texas reported. La Salle County Sheriff’s deputies responded to frantic 911 calls from migrants being smuggled in a semi-tractor trailer near Encinal, Texas, on Friday. Dispatchers could hear screams from migrants trapped inside the closed trailer traveling north and away from the border on Interstate 35. When the vehicle was encountered, two migrants were dead and 111 were apprehended after an exhaustive search.
Nearly five years ago, San Antonio police found another tractor-trailer where eight migrants were dead and 20 others were listed in critical or serious condition.