Uvalde, Texas.— Two migrants were found dead and at least 10 others were hospitalized Friday in South Texas after police received a call that they were “suffocating” in a train car traveling near the US-Mexico border. and Mexico.
The Uvalde Police Department said Border Patrol was informed of the phone call and was able to stop the train. About 15 migrants were found inside, according to a department statement.
The status of all those who were hospitalized was unknown at this time. University Health in San Antonio tweeted that it had received two male patients, one in critical condition and one in serious condition.
The Union Pacific Railroad company said in a statement that the people were in two cars of the train traveling east from Eagle Pass to San Antonio: 12 in a freight container and three in a hopper car. The two people who died were in the container, according to the statement.
Uvalde police said Union Pacific would lead the investigation.
Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez told the San Antonio-Express News that dispatchers received a 911 call around 3:50 p.m. from an unknown person requesting help. The train was stopped near the town of Knippa, which is less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the southern US border.
“We are still trying to determine if it was from someone inside the car,” Rodriguez said. “We assume that he went from inside one of the carriages.”
In the middle of last year, dozens of migrants were found in the back of a tractor-trailer that had been abandoned in sweltering heat on the outskirts of San Antonio. More than 50 of them died. That was the country’s deadliest human smuggling episode on the southern border of the United States, prompting authorities to vow to redouble their efforts.
Migrants regularly pass through Uvalde, sometimes leading to high-speed pursuits that force schools in the area to close. Following the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last May, in which a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, Texas lawmakers concluded in a report that the frequency of the closings may have led to a “decreased sense of vigilance” about security.
Union Pacific said it was “deeply saddened by this incident and by the tragedies taking place at the border. We take the safety of everyone very seriously and work tirelessly with law enforcement agencies to detect items and people traveling illegally on our railcars.”
