Article snippet: SAN ANTONIO — The authorities here discovered eight bodies in a tractor-trailer in a Walmart parking lot early Sunday morning in what they said was a human trafficking crime that underscored the perils facing migrants trying to enter the United States by any means available. By Sunday afternoon, another person had died at a hospital, according to a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. All of the dead were men. The eight people whose bodies were initially found were believed to have died from heat exposure and asphyxiation, a spokesman for the San Antonio Police Department said. Federal officials said in a statement on Sunday that 39 people had been in the trailer. The city’s fire chief, Charles Hood, said at a news conference that 30 were taken to hospitals; about 20 were in “extremely severe” or critical condition. In a statement, Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio called the episode “tragic,” adding that it “shines a bright light on the plight of immigrants looking for a better life and victims of human trafficking.” Smuggling migrants in the backs of trucks is a common form of human smuggling in the region, and it has claimed lives in the past. An expert on border enforcement and migrant deaths called the trucks “mobile ovens.” “Those things are made out of steel and metal,” the expert, Néstor P. Rodríguez, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, said on Sunday. “Yesterday in Austin, it was like 96 degrees at 9:30 in the ev... Link to the full article to read more
Journey Fatal for 9 Migrants Found in Truck in a San Antonio Parking Lot - The New York Times
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