A total of eight migrants died in a head-on collision Monday after the group fled authorities in Texas.
The migrants were packed inside a red Dodge pickup truck when they slammed into a white Ford F-150 while agents were in pursuit, the Texas Department of Public Safety told the Washington Examiner in an email. The violent crash took place 30 miles north of the city of Del Rio, which sits roughly 4 miles from the Mexican city of Ciudad Acuna. All eight of the migrants were pronounced dead on the scene.
A “driver and a child passenger from the Ford pickup and one undocumented passenger from the Dodge pickup were transported to a hospital in San Antonio and are in stable condition,” DPS wrote. The driver of the red Dodge attempted to flee on foot, but the person was apprehended by law enforcement and taken into custody.
THREE TRAGIC INCIDENTS THAT UNDERSCORE THE SEVERITY OF THE BORDER CRISIS
It remains unclear why DPS was pursuing the vehicle.
The collision is at least the second mass-casualty vehicle incident involving migrants for this month. On March 2, A total of 13 migrants died while riding in an SUV, which was packed to the brim with 25 people, after the vehicle veered in front of a semitruck in Imperial, California.
A hole in a border wall led 44 people to breach U.S. soil earlier this month, of which at least 19 were arrested by Customs and Border Protection authorities.
“We pray for the accident victims and their families during this difficult time,” El Centro sector chief patrol agent Gregory Bovino said at the time. “Initial investigation into the origins of the vehicles indicate a potential nexus to the aforementioned breach in the border wall. Human smugglers have proven time and again they have little regard for human life. Those who may be contemplating crossing the border illegally should pause to think of the dangers that all too often end in tragedy, tragedies our Border Patrol Agents and first responders are unfortunately very familiar with.”
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The Biden administration has grappled with a border crisis over the past few months as CBP authorities reported over 100,000 attempted illegal crossings in the month of February with a 50% uptick in drug seizures. The president has also faced a crisis pertaining to migrant children, with border enforcement having concluded that an unprecedented 117,000 migrant children will enter the United States by the end of the year.
CBP did not immediately return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
