The highway in Texas where the truck in which 53 undocumented immigrants died was abandoned is known as “the mouth of the wolf”.
This is so because the road is remote and dark, according to what the owner of a business in the sector told CNN.
The highway runs parallel to the Interstate 35 in San Antonio, a major north-south route in the central United States.
It is a key trade route from the southern border and runs from Laredo, Texas to Duluth, Minnesota, all the way to the Canadian border. From San Antonio, it meanders north to Austin, Waco, Fort Worth and Dallas.
The traffic of cargo trucks and cloned trucks, like the one that transported immigrants, is common on this highway.
“They clone supply trucks, cable trucks. We’ve had FedEx and UPS drivers say their magnetic stickers are stolen,” Zavala County Officer Eusevio Salinas told The New York Times.
But there is an even more worrying fact about this road: it is an area exploited by smugglers, who in turn are organized with drug cartels. “So you have a criminal organization that does not take into account the safety of migrants. They are treated like merchandise instead of people,” Craig Larrabee, special agent in charge of the Department of Homeland Security in San Antonio, told CNN.
Two of the four men arrested for the death by suffocation of the 53 migrants could face life in prison or the death penalty if convicted.
The Attorney General’s Office in the Western District of Texas issued a statement this Wednesday in which it specified that Homero Zamorano, aged 45, was accused of trafficking in undocumented persons resulting in death and that Christian Martínez, of 28, faces charges of conspiring to illegally transport aliens resulting in death.
These two suspects could be sentenced to death if convicted.
Martínez was arrested after a search of Zamorano’s mobile phone, in which exchanges of messages were identified in between the two talking about a human trafficking and smuggling operation.
The other two defendants are Mexicans Juan Claudio D’Luna-Méndez, from , and Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao, from 48, but for possession of weapons. These were found in the house that coincided with the address where the truck where the bodies appeared was registered. It is unclear what penalties the D’Luna face.
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