On June 27th, 51 immigrants were discovered dead outside San Antonio. After an unlawful human smuggling operation went horribly wrong, 39 males and 12 women were trapped in a tractor-trailer truck without access to water or air conditioning. The migrants died as temperatures climbed to 103 degrees Fahrenheit due to a lack of water and air conditioning.
According to Reuters, after local authorities identified the tractor trailer truck's owners, two suspects—both Mexican nationals—were arrested and charged in federal court. Juan Francisco D'Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D'Luna-Mendez face allegations of illegally possessing firearms while living in the United States. Another suspect, the truck driver, is also being detained.
Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge of the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said that the incident represents the greatest loss of human life stemming from a human trafficking attempt within US borders ever.
According to local police, "stacks of bodies" were found inside the tractor-trailer and other bodies were located in the nearby area as well. Some of the victims, according to their report, were hot to the touch.
In a recent interview with The Austin Journal, Selene Rodriguez, Texas Public Policy Foundation Policy Scholar, said, “Human smuggling is the precursor of human trafficking. People who conspire with human smugglers to illegally enter the United States typically incur thousands of dollars of debt to make the trip. After entering the country illegally, these same people are often forced to pay off that debt through forced labor and sexual exploitation, which is the essence of the modern-day slavery that is human trafficking.”
The problem of human smuggling is becoming increasingly apparent. According to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, 73% of Hispanic Texans think that there is a “crisis” at the Texas-Mexico border. It was also reported that 51% want the local and federal governments to do more to help the problem at the border. Additionally, 60% of Hispanic Texans support increasing law enforcement presence at the border.
President Joe Biden has drawn plenty of criticism for the situation at the border. Since his inauguration in September, the US Border Patrol has reported over 1.6 million land border encounters along the border. This represents a spike of more than 200% over last year.
A major part of the problem is the financial incentive for cartels to smuggle people and drugs.
Mexican drug cartels earn as much as $14 million a day attempting to smuggle people across the border and into the United States, according to Fox News.
According to Roy Villareal, a former Tucson Border Patrol chief, trafficked persons are enslaved to pay for their smuggling across the United States border. He said, "A lot of these vulnerable populations use their life savings. Some are essentially indentured servants and they're working off this debt for a long period of time. In other cases, some of these migrants are asked to transport narcotics or some form of crime to work off a different part of their debt."
Youths are especially at risk for this problem. According to a 2016 study from the University of Texas at Austin, there are 78,996 minor and youth victims of human trafficking in Texas at any one moment, as well as 234,457 workers who have been subjected to labor trafficking.