50 people are dead and 16, including four children, are in hospital after what appears to be a human trafficking tragedy in Texas.
They were found in or near an abandoned big rig truck and trailer on a remote back road near the city of San Antonio.
South Texas has long been the busiest area for illegal border crossings by Central American migrants entering from Mexico.
The area is experiencing a heatwave which is believed to be the major factor in the deaths of those trapped in the trailer with no water.
Three people have been taken into custody, but it’s unclear whether they are involved in the people smuggling operation.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy director at the American Immigration Council, had been dreading such a tragedy for months.
“With the border shut as tightly as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have been pushed into more and more dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is a way up,” he wrote on Twitter.
Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott who’s seeking re-election blamed the Democratic president: “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies.”
Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate running against Mr Abbott, called for urgent action to “dismantle human smuggling rings and replace them with expanded avenues for legal migration”.
