Six people who were found dead in a rail yard shipping container in Laredo, Texas, were from Honduras and Mexico and included a 14-year-old boy, all part of a human smuggling effort on a freight train, authorities said Thursday.
Police released more details about the discovery made Sunday in Laredo, near the U.S. border with Mexico, but said federal authorities were leading the investigation.
“They did not pass away in our city, but they were discovered here after hours of suffering,” Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño said at a news conference. “We are demanding justice for these lives lost. It doesn’t matter where they came from.”
The bodies were discovered by a Union Pacific employee. The Webb County medical examiner suspects the deaths were caused by hyperthermia, or heat stroke, a conclusion repeated by the mayor on Thursday.
The six people were put in the shipping container on Saturday in Del Rio, Texas, two days after the train departed from Long Beach, California, Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez Jr. said.
He said the train traveled to the San Antonio area from Del Rio before arriving Sunday in Laredo. Laredo is a busy land port for trade on the U.S.-Mexico border and a common nexus for the illegal movement of people.
“We did not know what we had at the beginning. We did not know that it was a human smuggling situation,” said Rodriguez, who declined to release further details about the route.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said he believes a seventh person in the group also died. The body of a 49-year-old Mexican man was found Monday in the San Antonio area, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Laredo.
“He may have been either thrown from the train after being found deceased or fell from the train and (died) as a result,” Salazar told reporters earlier this week.
The sheriff also disclosed that San Antonio police took a call Saturday from a relative of someone in the shipping container who had been informed about the oppressive conditions. Salazar said police were dispatched but didn’t find the container.
“This is my estimate: 120, 150 degrees inside these things,” he said of heat (topping 48 degrees Celsius).
Smuggling on trains has long been a concern partly because trains headed to the United States often slow or stop in Mexico before crossing the border. That creates an opportunity for smugglers or immigrants to climb aboard or hide drugs or other contraband on a train before it enters the U.S.
Two smugglers last year were sentenced to life in prison for what remains the nation’s deadliest human smuggling attempt across the U.S.-Mexico border. They were convicted in the deaths of 53 migrants found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022.
About 40 people were encountered daily in March crossing illegally by Border Patrol agents in Laredo, making it the third busiest sector among nine along the border with Mexico, according to the agency’s statistics.