Houston, (Samajweekly) Two migrants were found dead and 15 others injured after being trapped in a train car in Texas state’s Uvalde county, police said.
The total number of migrants in the container was 17, Xinhua news agency quoted Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin as saying on Friday night.
US Border Patrol stopped the train some 113 km west of San Antonio after the Uvalde Telecommunications Center received a 911 call “from an unknown third-party caller” on Friday afternoon saying people were “suffocating” in a train car travelling near the US-Mexico border.
There was no derailment, and the people were “undocumented immigrants”, according to a statement by the Uvalde Police Department.
Medical helicopters rushed to the scene.
According to an ABC News report, five of the injured were flown to San Antonio, and another seven were transported in ambulances.
Their conditions were not immediately known.
The train was bound from Eagle Pass to San Antonio, Union Pacific told CBS News in a statement.
Union Pacific said it was alerted by Border Patrol at about 4 p.m. that 15 people had been found in two different rail cars.
Highway 90 between the US-Mexico border and San Antonio is widely seen as a major human trafficking route.
In June 2022, 53 migrants, including unaccompanied teenagers, lost their lives inside a sweltering tractor-trailer that was abandoned outside of San Antonio — the deadliest migrant smuggling case in US history.
In a statement late Friday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said he was “heartbroken to learn of yet another tragic incident of migrants taking the dangerous journey”.
He said federal Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) agents were probing the case.
“We will work with the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office to hold those responsible. Smugglers are callous and only care about making a profit,” Mayorkas added.
