Two deadly train car suffocations latest in ‘horrendous amount of carnage’ along rail tracks
Anna Giaritelli
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AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas congressman representing the largest district on the U.S.-Mexico border said two deadly human smuggling incidents over the weekend show the tragedies of illegal immigration are as present within the United States as they are along the actual border.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose district encompasses 800 miles of the southern border and includes the small town of Uvalde, told the Washington Examiner on Monday evening that the carnage from fatal illegal immigration attempts near Uvalde and Eagle Pass, Texas, had become normal occurrences under President Joe Biden.
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“This is literally every single day in my district,” Gonzales said in a phone call. “The crisis is no longer on the Rio Grande. I mean, it is everywhere. It is everywhere throughout my district.”
On March 25, authorities responded to a Union Pacific train car in the border town of Eagle Pass, where a dozen immigrants who had illegally entered the country on foot were trapped inside one of the cars. One person was declared deceased and three others were taken to a hospital for medical care.
The group had been confined to the overheated, cramped space for more than 24 hours on an early spring day when temperatures surpassed 80 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a statement from the Eagle Pass Fire Department.
“Imagine being a first responder and seeing that not once a year but every week. You’re having to deal with some kind of traumatic experience either death or maim,” Gonzales said. “Every single week you’re having to fish a body out of a train or a river or a desert or a ranch or a car or car accident. And sometimes that body is an American. Sometimes that body is a migrant.”
On March 24, emergency officials responded to a 911 call from an unknown caller who reported that people were trapped and “suffocating” inside a train car that was moving northbound in south-central Texas, according to a statement from the Uvalde Police Department. Border Patrol agents and local police in the area were able to stop the train and locate the group inside one of the cars.
Seventeen illegal immigrants, including 15 men and two women, were found inside the train car outside the town as it was headed to the nearby town of Knippa. The two immigrants who died were men from Honduras.
“Once you see the pictures of a small 2-year-old baby who lost her arm when they were jumping off the train or her mother who lost a foot — the horrendous amount of carnage that is happening along the train tracks is through the roof,” Gonzales said.
Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber, who works in the county next to Uvalde, told the Washington Examiner on Monday that the first group had illegally crossed the border and then had gotten on the train.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a statement late Friday in response to the Uvalde incident and said he was “heartbroken to learn of yet another tragic incident of migrants taking the dangerous journey.”
But others, including Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, said immigrants continue to cross the border illegally and get past Border Patrol, noting these types of deadly incidents are not the exception but the norm.
“We need to look at the southern border; this happens every day. If it’s not my town, it’s somebody else’s or our county,” McLaughlin told ABC News. “It’s every day down here.”
The number of deceased immigrants recovered at the U.S.-Mexico border spiked during Biden’s first full year in office last year to the highest number on record, according to data acquired through a recent Freedom of Information Act request by the Washington Examiner.
A record-high 880 immigrants who illegally entered the U.S. were found deceased through various circumstances during fiscal 2022, which ended in September. The Washington Examiner obtained the Border Patrol data Monday through a FOIA request filed in July 2022.
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Multiple investigations have been launched into each incident by the Texas Department of Public Safety and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.
Schmerber warned that south-central Texas was not yet into its hottest months of the year, when temperatures often surpass 100 degrees and heat-related deaths among immigrants historically are at their highest levels.