Federal investigators said they had three smuggling suspects in custody Tuesday and at least 50 migrants died of heat exposure after being trapped in the back of a truck in the hot Texas sun.
The truck was found on a country road in San Antonio. The fatalities marked one of the worst tragedies in border history and ignited a search for answers to the growing migrant death toll under President Biden.
The president blamed smugglers, though his critics — including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — said it was Mr. Biden who encouraged the migrants to make the journey through his relaxed border policies.
“These deaths are on Biden,” Mr. Abbott said in a Twitter message. “They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”
Mr. Biden said the criticism was “political grandstanding around tragedy” and called it “shameful.”
He called the deaths “horrifying and heartbreaking.”
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“This incident underscores the need to go after the multibillion-dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants and leading to far too many innocent deaths,” the president said.
Homeland Security Investigations, which is leading the probe, confirmed that it had detained three people “believed to be part of the smuggling conspiracy.”
Authorities said they were alerted to the truck Monday after a city employee heard a cry for help coming from inside the truck.
When police arrived, they found 46 dead bodies stacked inside. Others in the truck were unconscious. Sixteen people, including four children, were rushed to hospitals. By Tuesday morning, some of the 16 had succumbed, raising the death toll to 50.
“This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Monday night.
All of the injuries were heat-related, authorities said. Temperatures topped 100 degrees in San Antonio on Monday.
Authorities couldn’t say whether other people had been in the truck but absconded by the time police arrived.
Investigators also didn’t say anything about the migrants’ route, though the road where the truck was found runs alongside Interstate 35, which is among the most popular smuggling routes into the U.S.
Migrants swim or raft the Rio Grande and then hole up at stash houses in Laredo. Smugglers then stuff the migrants into cars or trucks and try to break them through the cordon of Border Patrol highway checkpoints. The checkpoint just north of Laredo is among the most active, particularly when it comes to truckloads of migrants.
In the past two weeks, Border Patrol agents have nabbed truckloads of 60, 93, 71 and 102 people. Migrants caught in those incidents told agents they paid $2,000 to $10,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.
Homeland Security said the victims identified so far from Monday’s tragedy came from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.
The southern border has set records for chaos under Mr. Biden, who reversed several get-tough policies of the Trump administration.
Illegal migration quickly soared and has remained at a record pace in the 17 months since Inauguration Day, defying Mr. Biden’s insistence that the numbers were seasonal and nothing out of the ordinary.
Indeed, May marked the worst month on record in terms of people caught jumping the southern border.
“This tragedy should serve as a stark reminder to all Americans that there is nothing humane about the Biden administration’s decision to abdicate its responsibility to secure our borders and instead cultivate an atmosphere of lawlessness,” said Rep. John Katko of New York, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.
More migration means more people dying in the summer heat, freezing in the mountains in the winter, drowning in the Rio Grande or otherwise succumbing to the dangers of the journey. A startling number of migrants also are dying from falls from the border wall.
The Border Patrol set a record high last year for migrant deaths. The agency has not reported figures for 2022, but based on the pace of individual news releases about deaths, this year is also looking grim.
Two migrants were found earlier this month in the back of a truck in La Salle County, also along the route from Laredo to San Antonio. They were among more than 110 migrants packed into the truck, which was abandoned along the side of the road.
Mr. Katko said migrant smuggling has become “one of the most lucrative businesses right now,” and plenty of people are cashing in.
A person charged with operating a stash house connected to the La Salle County smuggling case told investigators that he was paid $150 for each migrant harbored. Foot guides, who lead migrants across the Rio Grande, can make $100 per person.
Drivers who shuttle migrants around Laredo can collect a couple of hundred dollars, and those who make runs deeper into Texas, Arizona, New Mexico or California can earn $2,000 or more per person while trying to get through the Border Patrol’s highway checkpoints.
Truck drivers who carry large loads can make even more. One driver nabbed making the Laredo-to-San Antonio run last month with 110 migrants told agents he was expecting $60,000 for that one trip.
While Republicans blamed Mr. Biden and the president blamed smugglers, immigrant rights groups lashed out at all sides.
“We need a welcoming immigration system that recognizes the humanity of all people,” said RAICES, a legal assistance organization for migrants. “If the Biden administration continues to illegally turn away migrants and deny their chance to rightfully seek asylum, individuals and families escaping persecution, war and climate disasters will continue to face violence and death.”
The American Immigration Council said survivors from the truck should be granted permission to stay in the U.S. to seek visas available to victims of crime.
Justice for Migrant Women connected the deaths to last week’s Supreme Court decision overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling that established a national right to abortion.
“Learning of this tragedy, during a heat wave most certainly exacerbated by climate change, four days following the failure of the Supreme Court to protect the constitutional right to an abortion, and just weeks following a series of mass shootings is utterly devastating,” said Monica Ramirez, the group’s president. “We cannot separate these occurrences from one another because they are inextricably tied to the fact that countless systems in the United States exclude, fail and harm our communities. The systems are intentionally designed to fail migrants, women and their families.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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