As Texas death toll rises to nine, a look at the deadly trade of human trafficking by truck
It could take months for investigators to determine what preceded the deaths of at least nine people found with dozens of ailing individuals in a semi-trailer discovered outside a Walmart in San Antonio, Texas, in what authorities are calling an immigrant-smuggling attempt gone wrong.
The death toll rose by one yesterday, with the truck driver set to appear on court.
Previous cases of smugglers using similar trucks to move human cargo shed light on the dangerous method of human trafficking — and how it can quickly turn fatal.
Here’s a look at how smugglers deploy and use large trucks to move people:
How common is human trafficking by truck?
Border officials have reported an uptick in the number of people-smuggling incidents using semi-trailers. That included one on July 7, when Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas, found 72 people from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador locked inside a trailer. Weeks before, they’d rescued 44 people from Mexico and Guatemala discovered after police stopped an 18-wheeler near one of the city’s international bridges.
By far the most notorious and best documented case occurred in 2003, when 19 of about 100 people being smuggled in a truck trailer in south Texas died of heat-related injuries; that included a 7-year-old boy. More than a dozen smugglers were convicted in that case, including the American commercial driver at the wheel, Tyrone Mapletoft Williams, and the purported head of the smuggling ring, Karla Patricia Chavez-Joya, a Honduran national.
Where are the immigrants from?
In the 2003 case, the pickup site for the immigrants was near Harlingen, Texas, about 30km from the US-Mexican border. The plan was to drive t through an immigration checkpoint 80km away on Highway 77 near Sarita, Texas; once through the crossing, the immigrants were to be transferred to separate vans bound for Houston.
Why use trucks?
The objective of immigrants who make it undetected across the border typically isn’t to remain in that border area. Most hope to make it to large US cities, like Chicago or New York, where they may have jobs or family waiting for them. That’s where the trucks come in. Smugglers know there are hundreds and thousands of immigrants desperate to get away from the border as fast as possible. And they see the money-making opportunity. The more people they can move at one time, the more the profit.
In the 2003 case, the smugglers actively sought non-Hispanic, American drivers who they believed would be less likely to raise suspicions and more likely to make it through the Sarita checkpoint. Tyrone Williams, a licensed truck driver from New York, fit that description. Just before picking up his human cargo, Williams had hauled milk products from New York in his refrigerated truck.
How do they die?
What charges could perpetrators face?
Because the crime involves the crossing of international and of state borders, it’s often federal authorities who prosecute human traffickers. The available charges range from conspiracy to aiding and abetting the transporting of unlawful aliens resulting death. Maximum sentences can range from a few years behind bars and to the death penalty. Prosecutors did initially indicate they would seek the death penalty for Tyrone Williams. But in 2012, a federal judge sentenced him to more than 30 years in prison without the possibility of patrol.