Border Patrol agents working at a highway checkpoint approximately 25 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas discovered 48 people hidden in the back of a tractor-trailer in an incident last week, according to the federal agency.
Four dozen Mexican citizens, including two children, were found in the back of the trailer during a search by federal agents at the Interstate Highway 35 checkpoint near Laredo, Texas, last Thursday.
Border Patrol sets up permanent checkpoints within 100 miles of the international border to scan vehicles for drug or human smuggling attempts that made it past the border. As the truck attempted to move through the checkpoint, an agent referred it for a second inspection. The truck drove through a nearby garage-sized X-ray machine that showed people were hiding inside the back of it.
The driver, an American citizen, was arrested along with the 48 people rescued from the trailer. Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees Border Patrol, did not state if anyone was injured during the smuggling attempt or if the trailer was air-conditioned.
CBP said cramming dozens of people into a small space was especially dangerous in light of the coronavirus pandemic and the potential for the virus to spread among those who were in the truck. Those arrested will be temporarily detained and returned to Mexico within hours, per the Trump administration’s new policy to avoid holding illegal immigrants in federal facilities amid the public health crisis.
CBP did not state how the 48 people inside the truck entered the country. The number of people apprehended by Border Patrol agents while illegally entering the country has dropped significantly amid the coronavirus pandemic, to less than 16,000 in April, roughly half each of the past six months. The United States has the most known coronavirus cases in the world.
