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Four hours in the guts of a truck: the nightmare of migrants to cross into the US

2022-07-03T10:46:26.840Z


Dangerous clandestine travel by trailer, like the one that caused this week's tragedy, is becoming more common due to increased controls on both sides of the border in recent years.


The first record was in the small Texan town of Encinal, half an hour from the Mexican border.

It was 2:50 p.m. Monday and a red Volvo cargo truck was passing through the border patrol checkpoint.

The driver, wearing a black cap and a striped polo shirt, was captured by security cameras while talking to the police without getting out of the vehicle.

The trailer was loaded with 67 people who were risking their lives by clandestinely crossing the border.

A half hour later, the trailer passed another control later, in the town of Cotulla, without the agents detecting anything unusual either.

The next registration is from 18:20: the truck has been abandoned on a lost road on the outskirts of San Antonio.

When the police open the back doors, 47 migrants had already died from overcrowding,

suffocation and dehydration.

Six more would die in hospital in the following days.

They were locked up in the guts of the truck for at least four hours without water or air conditioning, according to the authorities, who also confirmed that it was the greatest migrant tragedy on US soil.

They may even have spent more time in there during the heat wave in Texas, with temperatures reaching 46 degrees.

According to the route, the entrance had been through the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, in the State of Tamaulipas, a focus of organized crime.

But the origin of the migrants is even further away.

Among the deceased, 27 were Mexican.

Several, from southern states like Oaxaca.

Or further still: Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans.

Police and other first responders work at the scene where they were found dead on June 27, 2022. Eric Gay (AP)

Hermeticism has marked the communication of the authorities since the day of the tragedy, fueling rumors about the identity of the migrants.

The American agency

The Associated Press

has been able to confirm that among the victims were two Guatemalan children, Wilmer Tulul and Pascual Melvin Guachiac, 13 years old.

"Mom, we are already dating," was the last message the family received.

The minors, who were cousins, left on June 14 from the community of Tzucubal, in the mountainous southwest of the Central American country.

Their goal was to get to Houston, where relatives were waiting for them.

According to the same information, the father of one of the boys had paid $3,000 to a coyote, the mafia figure dedicated to human smuggling.

Another 3,000 still needed to be paid, once they reached their destination.

The ongoing investigation, which has already claimed four detainees, has not made it clear if the migrants crossed the border inside the truck.

The most common pattern is that, despite having crossed Mexico inside the trailers, they make them get off a little earlier to cross to the other side on foot through some little-guarded area of ​​the semi-desert territory shared by both countries.

And once on US soil, after border control, agree with the coyote to return to the truck to reach one of the big cities.

The trailer with the 67 people passed, in any case, two controls, which extend over the first 100 kilometers of Texan territory.

The Governor of the State, Republican Greg Abbott,

He justified himself on Wednesday by saying that "the border patrol does not have the resources to inspect all the trucks."

Timothy Tubbs, a former police director in Laredo (United States), told the local press that criminals often spray migrants with spices and food seasonings to camouflage the smell from the agents' dogs.

It's also unclear what time the truck arrived at the road where it was found, a lonely turnoff from the main highway.

At 5:55 p.m., the police received a call to the emergency number.

The owner of a mechanical workshop in an area near the highway told this newspaper, the day after the tragedy, that another of the workers was the one who notified the police: “When he went to work he found the trailer stopped there.

He approached and heard cries for help in Spanish from inside the trailer.

He freaked out and called the emergency room.”

Authorities believe the driver must have had a breakdown and decided to abandon the vehicle.

In fact, he was arrested as he fled the scene on foot and attempted to pass himself off as one of the migrants.

The driver is one of the four arrested,

More trailers, less trains

The use of cargo trucks for human trafficking by organized crime is increasingly common.

Especially after the tightening of controls on the freight train lines that crosses Mexico to the north, explicitly nicknamed La Bestia.

In 2014, a joint agreement between the governments of Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto focused efforts on blocking that path.

“Walls were built, more police were put in place, and the speed of the train was even increased so that people couldn't get on or off easily,” explains Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Institute for Women in Migration.

The figures are eloquent.

From 2014 to 2017, the cases of migrant smuggling in cargo trucks that came to light in the US went from just 20 to close to 100, according to a compilation by the Strauss Center in Austin.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, far right, and other officers walk away after briefing the media at the scene where an 18-wheeler was searched in the 2000 block of South General McMullen in San Antonio .Sam Owens (AP)

In 2017, precisely, a truck with 39 migrants was found in the parking lot of a shopping center in San Antonio.

10 people died.

"This shows that when you put more restrictions, people are forced to look for more dangerous options," summarizes Kuhner.

Since then, the governments of both the United States and Mexico have further tightened border controls.

Three years ago, the Executive of Andrés Manuel López Obrador approved that the bus companies request the immigration document from their clients before buying the tickets.

Another exceptional measure, the so-called Title 42, justified this time by the pandemic, has allowed the US for two years to immediately return undocumented migrants to the Mexican shore.

Paradoxically, this fast-track mechanism that does not deport migrants to their countries of origin has encouraged, according to human rights organizations, that people insistently seek to try again.

In the month of May, all records of illegal entries into the country were broken with more than 239,000 crossings.

The blows caused by the pandemic have also caused movements in migratory patterns.

The Mexicans had reduced almost to a minimum their undocumented entries in the neighboring country.

In the last year, however, that has doubled.

And the crossings continue to rise, as this week's tragedy showed, where almost half of the people hidden in the truck trailer were Mexican.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-07-03

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