‘Stacks of bodies’ found in Texas truck as death toll hits 50

The death toll from a human trafficking incident on Monday in which migrants suffered under extreme Texas heat inside a truck rose to 50 on Tuesday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

A San Antonio Fire Department official said they found “stacks of bodies” and no signs of water in the truck, which was found next to railroad tracks in a remote area on the city’s southern outskirts.

The migrants died inside a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas, where temperatures swelled to a high of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius). It was one of the most deadly recent incidents of human smuggling along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I want to offer my condolences to the relatives of this catastrophe,” Lopez Obrador said.

Some 22 Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans were identified among the dead, Mexico Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Twitter on Tuesday. There was no information on the nationality of the other 19, Mexican officials said.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said that its Homeland Security Investigations division was conducting a criminal investigation into “an alleged human smuggling event” in coordination with local police.
Sixteen other people were transported to hospitals for heat stroke and exhaustion, including four minors, but no children were among the dead, the San Antonio Fire Department said.

A spokesman for the Honduran foreign ministry told Reuters that the country’s consulates in Houston and Dallas would be investigating the incident.

Immigration officials from Mexico are also assisting the families of the victims and the transfer of the bodies, Lopez Obrador said.
-SAN ANTONIO, June 28 (Reuters)