Eleven indicted in US over deaths of migrants in freight railcar

A US federal grand jury has indicted 11 people accused of running a migrant smuggling operation that ended with seven people dead in a freight railcar, the Justice Department said.

The department said the defendants allegedly smuggled undocumented migrants into the United States on freight trains from at least April 2023 through May of this year. It said they charged between $1,500 and $10,000 for each crossing.

According to the Justice Department, smugglers loaded at least seven migrants into a Union Pacific freight railcar in Del Rio, Texas, on the US-Mexico border, in the early hours of May 9. The department said the railcar had no ventilation and outside temperatures were above 31 degrees Celsius, or 88 degrees Fahrenheit.

The train left for San Antonio. The Justice Department said the smugglers later reopened the railcar and found the migrants in distress, including one person who was already dead. It said the smugglers left the body near the railroad track and fled while the train continued.

The Justice Department statement said a worker at the Union Pacific Rail Yard in Laredo saw a leg sticking out from a Conex shipping container on May 10. It said six people were then found dead in the container. Another migrant was found dead along the railroad tracks in San Antonio.

The seven victims included a 14-year-old. Four were Mexican nationals and three were Honduran, according to the Justice Department.

One defendant, Mayra Alekandra Huerta, was arrested shortly after the Del Rio incident. Eight others were taken into custody in Texas last week, and two remain at large.

The source report said fatal smuggling incidents recur along the US-Mexico border. It cited a 2022 case in which 53 migrants died after being abandoned inside a tractor-trailer in extreme heat on a remote road in Texas.