Federal agents are investigating the deaths of six people believed to be immigrants found Sunday inside a shipping container at a Union Pacific rail yard near the Mexico border in Laredo, Texas, as a potential human smuggling case. A seventh death is also believed to be connected.
A Union Pacific employee found the bodies of six people inside a shipping container on Sunday afternoon during a routine cargo check. A seventh body was discovered by police near railroad tracks in Bexar County, about 150 miles from Laredo, and is believed to be connected to the other deaths, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said at a press conference on Monday.
An autopsy performed on one of the deceased, a 29-year-old Mexican woman found inside the freight car, suggested she died of hyperthermia or heat stroke, Dr. Corinne Stern, the Webb County medical examiner, told The Associated Press.
“I’ve ruled that an accidental death,” she said, adding she believes the others may have died from heat stroke but could not rule on their cause of death until she has completed the autopsies.
Stern approximates that it took up to eight hours for the victims to die.
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“This was a horrific scene,” Stern said, noting that immigrant deaths are a common occurrence in the 10-county region her office covers.
“This spring has been busier than it was this time last year,” the medical examiner said, referencing the number of migrant deaths recorded by her office last year.
The identity of the seventh person has not been released, though Salazar confirmed he was male and had a Mexican voter registration card on his person.
His cause and manner of death are still under investigation, the sheriff said.
ID cards and cellphones found by Stern indicate the six deceased individuals found inside the car may be from Mexico and Honduras. Laredo sits directly across the border from Mexico and is a major international inland trading hub.
Fingerprints were also taken and shared with the U.S. Border Patrol to help positively identify the six individuals. They were found roughly 24 hours before the seventh victim, the sheriff said, adding that the load of people allegedly being smuggled could have been much larger than the seven who were found deceased.
The boxcars can not be opened from the inside, meaning the body of the seventh victim may have been dumped after a person opened the freight from the outside, he explained, noting that how the body landed on tracks had not been confirmed.
Homeland Security said in a statement to the AP that it is “actively investigating this case as a potential human smuggling event with assistance from the Laredo Police Department and Texas Rangers.”
Salazar described the boxcars as “airtight” with the potential to reach up to 150 degrees. He also told reporters that someone inside the train car had sent a text message to a relative, alerting them to the extreme heat. The person who sent the message was among the deceased, he said.
Past instances of multiple deaths in trains and tractor-trailers not far from the U.S.-Mexico border have involved migrants, including a 2022 incident in which 53 were found dead in an abandoned truck with malfunctioning air conditioning on the outskirts of San Antonio.
— With files from The Associated Press
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