San Antonio: At least 46 people, migrants who crossed into the United States were found dead in and around a an abandoned tractor-trailer on the outskirts of San Antonio, NYT reported.
State and city officials quoted by NYT said that 16 others were hospitalized alive but ‘suffering from heat exhaustion and apparent dehydration’.
“The plight of migrants seeking refuge is always a humanitarian crisis,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio told reporters late Monday, according to NYT. “But tonight we are dealing with a horrific human tragedy.”
The chief of the San Antonio Police Department, William McManus, said three people had been taken into custody.
McManus described people admitted in hospital as “hot to the touch” and apparently hit by “heat stroke, heat exhaustion.”
The truck, though designed to be refrigerated, he said, had “no visible, working A/C unit.”
Officials did not say how the people had died, but suggested that the extreme heat had been a cause.
San Antonio is a major transit point for migrants making their way from Texas to places across the United States. The area was a location known to locals as a “drop-off spot” for migrants, the couple said.
It was not clear where the people who were found on Monday had come from.
(The report first appeared in New York Times)
