A truck driver has been arrested for alleged human smuggling after Border Patrol agents working in Arizona found 33 undocumented migrants locked in the back of his trailer on Tuesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a news release.
There were 12 kids and one pregnant woman in the group, and the interior was heated to as high as 37 C despite being equipped with refrigeration, CBP added.
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The 2002 Freightliner tractor trailer was stopped at the Interstate 19 Immigration Checkpoint north of Nogales, Ariz. on Tuesday.
There, agents asked the driver to proceed to secondary inspection.
Agents searched the trailer and found Mexican produce — but then they also found migrants from Mexico and El Salvador inside.
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The kids in the trailer were aged from three to 17 years old. One migrant was pregnant, another was a convicted felon, CBP said.
The agency said the trailer was heated to almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is equivalent to about 37 degrees Celsius.
The heat caused “imminent danger to the people locked inside with no means of egress,” and its refrigeration system wasn’t turned on, CBP said.
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The driver, a 37-year-old, was charged with felony human smuggling violations, while the U.S. Border Patrol took the 33 migrants into custody.
They’re to be processed for immigration violations, the agency added.
The arrest happened as U.S. apprehensions at the Mexican border fell by 30 per cent in June, according to Mexico.
Apprehensions dropped to just over 100,000 in June from over 144,000 the month before, according to CBP data cited by the Mexican government.
June figures weren’t available on CBP’s site on Wednesday.
The drop came after Mexico deployed thousands of police to both its southern and northern borders, as part of an agreement to reduce the migrants hitting the U.S. border within 45 days.
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The arrest also came as scrutiny of migrant detention intensifies following the release of a report saying that facilities holding undocumented people in South Texas were seeing “serious overcrowding” and needed “immediate attention.”
Images attached to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of the Inspector General showed people lying on floors with Mylar blankets in crowded rooms,
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited a border patrol station in Texas Monday and said migrants were being kept in “horrifying” conditions, and that detainees were being told to drink out of toilets — a claim, however, that was not confirmed independently.
Roy Villareal, chief patrol agent of the CBP’s Tucson sector, released a video denying that people are made to drink from toilets.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that migrants who are “unhappy” with the conditions at detention centres should be told “not to come.”
— With files from Reuters
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