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, 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.
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 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,” Rodriguez said. Asked about the route taken, the chief said it was a federal investigation and that he would not be releasing further details.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said Monday that he believed the body of a 49-year-old Mexican man found in the region was connected to the same train. Bexar County, the county seat of San Antonio, is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Laredo.
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.
Smuggling on trains crossing the border 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.
Border encounters dropped toward the end of the Biden administration and reached record low numbers during the second Trump administration. 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.
