The Border Patrol has seen a sweeping rise in the number of tractor-trailers intercepted at highway checkpoints that are packed full of migrants who were smuggled into the United States from Mexico during the coronavirus pandemic.
Agents in the southeastern Texas regions of the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo have found 3,740 people hidden inside 226 commercial 18-wheelers since the start of the fiscal year last October. The two regions are among nine that the Border Patrol divides the southern border into, but these two parts of Texas historically have seen the most tractor-trailer smuggling incursions.
The discoveries in Laredo alone over the past fiscal year is 37% higher than at this time last fiscal year. The number of truck incidents nationwide at this time last year was up 40% compared to the previous year, an indication that smugglers are increasingly relying on the practice to move people throughout the country.
Illegal immigrants who are arrested for crossing the border or after being discovered in a tractor-trailer and treated for potential medical issues are immediately returned to Mexico without standard due process because of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s spring recommendation that U.S. Customs and Border Protection not take into custody and detain people while the coronavirus outbreak exists. People found in tractor-trailers are provided face masks, CBP said.
“Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and implementation of several travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the disease, human smugglers continue to place migrants in harm’s way,” CBP said in a statement this week. “In the midst of COVID-19 spread, ruthless human smugglers continue to expose migrants to the deadly virus by forcing them to travel inside crowded trailers, with no ventilation, no water and no food for hours, even days.”
Tractor-trailers are used to smuggle people from Mexico and through the ports of entry at border crossings, where all vehicles must pass in order to enter the county. They also transport illegal immigrants within the U.S. to their final destinations.
In a discovery made on July 13, agents from Laredo found 35 people inside the trailer and cabin of a truck after it attempted to pass through a Border Patrol highway checkpoint on Interstate 83. The trailer had an internal temperature of 126 degrees. The dozens packed inside were determined to be unlawfully present in the U.S. and were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. On July 24, agents found 37 people who had been locked inside a livestock trailer and had no means of getting out.
“Smugglers are unscrupulous criminals and will stop at nothing to enrich their pockets, even if it involves locking human beings in trailers intended for animals,” acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said in a statement.
The Border Patrol classifies truck interceptions and the subsequent arrests of illegal immigrants as rescues because of the conditions inside the trucks that have led to hospitalizations and deaths. Most rescues happen at Border Patrol-operated highway checkpoints set up 20 miles to 100 miles north of the border. The intent of the checkpoints is to seize drugs, contraband, and people who made it past agents on the border and are now being moved farther into the country.
In April 2018, a Kentucky man was sentenced to life in federal prison for transporting dozens of illegal immigrants in a scorching hot tractor-trailer. Ten people were found dead inside the truck, which was parked behind a Walmart in San Antonio, Texas, in July 2017. The case made national news, and dozens of similar truck-smuggling incidents have been interrupted each year, according to CBP.
