The death toll from the suffocating tractor-trailer abandoned on the outskirts of San Antonio with a “pile of bodies” inside rose to 51 on Tuesday, officials said.
The victims, found Monday after temperatures in the area hit 103 degrees, include Mexican nationals, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, according to Mexico’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, who cited information provided to him by American authorities.
The Honduran government on Tuesday released the names of several victims: Margie Tamara Paz Grajera, Fernando Jose Redondo Caballero, Alejandro Miguel Andino Caballero, and Adela Betulia Ramirez Quezada.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told The Daily Beast on Tuesday evening that Homeland Security Investigations is investigating the “alleged human smuggling event,” along with local police.
The agency said officials also currently consider the disaster a “protected area” from deportation and other immigration enforcement activity in the wake of the tragedy.
“To the fullest extent possible, ICE and CBP will not conduct immigration enforcement activities so individuals, regardless of immigration status, can seek assistance, and otherwise address the tragedy with law enforcement,” the agency said.
Bexar County officials said that 39 males and 12 females had died and some of the victims could be under 18 years old. Officials said late Monday that an additional 16 people—including four children—were taken to four hospitals with apparent heat exhaustion and dehydration after authorities opened the trailer doors on Monday.
Alex Salgado was only minutes from the scene that evening when he caught wind of the tragedy in his hotel room and realized that it was blocks away—he even heard the sirens. The migrant advocate felt compelled to race over and began filming live on Facebook to document what was happening before many of the country’s authorities arrived.
“It is something to see the pile of bodies, it’s... shocking,” he told The Daily Beast in Spanish. “I’ve never in my life seen anything like that. And I’m also a migrant.”
“Some people who were there said that they heard when [the migrants] were yelling for help,” added Salgado, who works for a Honduran migrant organization called Fuerza Catracha. But what stuck out to him were the faces of the police on the scene, many of them Latino, and at least one of whom expressed that she shared his own feeling of helplessness, he said.
“I know what you feel,” he recalled the cop telling him Monday evening. “I also feel it. My parents are migrants, and I was born in this country, but I’m of Mexican blood and Latino descent.”
She had only seen anything like this, he said, when a group of migrants were found dead in a Walmart parking lot, a notorious 2017 incident in the same city. “But that was only 10,” he remembered her saying, referring to the number of people who died in that case.
For now, Salgado said he was working with other migrant groups to prepare to help the families of victims, and support the survivors themselves with legal assistance and trauma support.
“Imagine… that they’re dehydrated, desperate, and within a week they’re released and going to face deportation. It’s horrible,” he said.
Local fire chief Charles Hood said that while the vehicle was designed to be refrigerated, the trailer had no working A/C unit or water inside, and that people brought out of the death trap were hot to the touch. It has crossed the border through the Laredo checkpoint, Rep. Henry Cuellar said.
Law enforcement was alerted to the tragedy when a city worker heard cries for help from the truck on Monday morning. Initial reports suggested that 46 bodies were discovered at the site on a remote back road, but the toll now appears to have risen. The case is already one of the worst tragedies related to people smuggling across the Mexico-U.S. border in recent years.
“This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said, adding that the dead had “families who were likely trying to find a better life.”
William McManus, the chief of the San Antonio Police Department, said three people had been arrested in connection with the horrific discovery. He did not say if the driver who appeared to have abandoned the truck was among those taken into custody. The tragedy is the deadliest case of migrant deaths in the city’s history, McManus said.
According to a report from the San Antonio Express-News, Felipe Betancourt Sr. and his son, Felipe Jr., claim that a third party falsely used U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and Texas DOT credentials associated with one of their trucking-company vehicles on the truck in which the migrants were discovered. They referred to the practice as “cloning.”
Separately, Isaac Limon, who identified himself as a son-in-law, told The Daily Beast that the credentials were misleadingly repurposed by whoever was behind the now-notorious vehicle in what amounted to a setup. Limon said the company had not been contacted by authorities but would be happy to work with investigators.
“The first thing that we realized was, you know, that’s our people out there—so many people that tragically lost their lives,” said Limon, noting they were a Mexican-American family themselves. “I mean, a lot of people that we know have been through the same thing, and it’s just something very sad. But the second thing on our minds was that like, hey, what’s gonna happen to us?”
Limon insisted that the vehicle identification number (VIN) inside the grisly crime scene would not match what was registered with state and national authorities for his family’s vehicles, indicating the truck found in San Antonio had an additional window that their company’s truck did not.
ICE did not respond to requests for comment on Limon’s statements.
The tragedy is the latest nightmare associated with attempts at mass crossings of the southern border. Last December, over 50 people died when another trailer filled with migrants flipped on a road in southern Mexico. And in April 2021, 10 people died when a van carrying 29 migrants crashed in Texas. That tragedy came just weeks after 13 people lost their lives when an SUV carrying 25 people crashed outside of San Diego.
The latest case is already being cashed in on for political point-scoring.
“These deaths are on Biden,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted late Monday. “They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”
