The migrant smugglers of the tragedy in San Antonio, Texas, which has so far left 50 dead and 12 hospitalized, They used the information of a legal truck for the vehicle in which they transported dozens of Mexicans and Central Americans in subhuman and overcrowded conditions.
The use of these vehicles had already left 10 immigrants dead in July 2017 in that same city due to the extreme temperatures and lack of ventilation to which they were subjected in a truck that was found in a Walmart parking lot.
In both cases the victims presented suffocation, dehydration and heat stroke inside the vehicles.
The owners of the transport company Betancourt Trucking and Harvesting de Texas They assured the San Antonio Express-News on Tuesday that the truck found yesterday abandoned with 46 bodies it had the same color and federal and state identifications as one of his trucks.
However, they noted that theirs was stationed at the company.
“Initial reports indicate that this tragedy was caused by smugglers or human traffickers who they disregard the lives they endanger and exploit for profit“said the president on Tuesday Joe Biden it’s a statement.
He underscored the need to go following “the multibillion-dollar criminal smuggling industry that preys on migrants and causes too many innocent deaths.”
In February of last year, Texas authorities released audios of emergency calls in which two people claimed to be trapped in a white “pipe” (tanker truck) in the San Antonio area.
“We don’t see anything, we’re inside a pipe. God, we don’t have oxygen”said the person who called the emergency service. “We are regarding 80 people. The truck is stopped. It seems to me that (we are) on the side of the road because the cars are heard,” she added in Spanish, while other people’s cries and complaints are heard at the same time.
“We are dying,” another person says in another call.
A day later, and due to the tracing of the calls, the authorities found an empty tanker truck near San Antonio.
Due to yesterday’s tragedy, in which four of the victims died in hospitals, three people have been arrestedwhile in the 2017 Walmart case the truck driver was sentenced to life in prison.
The Biden Administration, together with other countries in the region, launched a campaign once morest immigrant smuggling last February, which in the first three months led to the arrest of more than 2,400 suspects.
