BBC journalist Suhrab Sirat is making a point of the bitter irony associated with the recent human trafficking attempt in Texas that ended up in the deaths of dozens of migrants.
“The suspected driver of a truck where 53 migrants died from heat in Texas did not know that the air conditioner had stopped working, court documents say,” Sirat recently posted on Twitter. “It is the deadliest human trafficking incident in U.S. history."
Reuters reports Homero Zamorano is now accused of being the driver of the semi-truck in which all the victims were traveling as part of a human smuggling attempt. When taken into custody by San Antonio police, Zamorano is reported to have been under the influence of methamphfetamine, with both U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar and an official from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirming his drug usage to Reuters.
NPR also reports the other man taken into custody at the scene, Christian Martinez, told a government informant the trailer’s AC unit stopped working without the driver realizing it. With the compliant being filed in Texas Federal Court, Martinez added Zamorano was "unaware the air conditioning unit stopped working."
Zamorano now officially faces charges of alien smuggling resulting in death, while Martinez has been hit with one count of conspiracy to transport illegal aliens resulting in death.
According to Reuters, 51 migrants were found dead outside San Antonio on June 27. With the 39 men and 12 women all deprived of water and air conditioning, all the victims succumbed as temperatures rose as high as 103 degrees fahrenheit.
In addition to the charges Zamorano and Martinez now face, authorities have also charged a pair of Mexican nationals in U.S. federal court after local authorities identified them as the owners of the tractor trailer truck. Juan Francisco D'Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D'Luna-Mendez face charges of possessing firearms while living in the U.S. illegally.
Acting special agent in charge of the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Craig Larrabee, is on record in calling the incident “the greatest recorded loss of human life from a human trafficking attempt within America’s borders.”
Local police have described the scene as “stacks of bodies” inside the tractor trailer with other bodies strewn around the nearby area. Some of the bodies were said to be hot to the touch, strongly suggesting dehydration or heat stroke.
In a recent interview with the Austin Journal, Texas Public Policy Foundation Policy Scholar Selene Rodriguez asserted that “human smuggling is the precursor of human trafficking.”
She later said, “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.”