Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the establishment of more truck checkpoints throughout the state, in addition to other measures, to prevent tragedies such as the death of 53 people in a truck found on Monday.
At a press conference in Eagle Pass, the Republican governor announced that the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) will implement the new points for the vehicle inspection, focused on cargo trucks.
“DPS will create and implement a checkpoint strategy immediately. They will begin to target trucks like the one that was used where people perished”, he deepened.
The checkpoints will be part of Operation Lone Star, implemented by Abbott last year to reinforce the security of the southern border.
The Republican explained that the DPS will deploy teams trained to detect cloned trucks along smuggling corridors.
Abbott’s response comes after investigations revealed that the truck carrying more than 60 migrants locked in the trailer under high temperatures passed at least two inspection points when entering the United States from Mexico.
The red truck, which was found Monday on a San Antonio highway after 14 .00 hours had been cloned and was carrying the false identification of a cargo company in Texas.
Francis co Garduño, commissioner of the National Migration Institute (INM) of Mexico, explained today that the vehicle passed through the US immigration checkpoints, where it was captured by security cameras at 00.50 hours (19.50 GMT) last Monday in Encinal (Texas).
This suggests that the migrants must have stayed several hours locked in the truck, in what has been considered the greatest human trafficking tragedy in recent decades in the United States.
The driver, identified by Mexican government officials as Homero Zamorano, was caught on camera crossing a Customs and Protection Office checkpoint Border Patrol (CBP) in Encinal.
In this regard, Abbott said that “the Border Patrol does not have the resources to be able to inspect all the trucks and, as a result, did not have the capacity to save those lives.”
Zamorano was arrested in a nearby field posing as one of the migrants smuggled in the truck, according to information from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
In addition to the new vehicle checkpoints, Abbott said DPS will deploy at least two new teams made up of Texas National Guard Soldiers to areas with record crossings.
The Texas National Guard also plans to put more drones into the air in the coming months to guard the border. There will also be more barbed wire barriers along the Rio Grande border and fences to discourage the passage of migrants.
“Our prayers are with the affected families,” Governor Abbott said. “We don’t want to see that ever again.”
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