TLAPACOYAN, Mexico – Initially, Mexican migrants Pablo Ortega and Julio Lopez profited from smuggling a first-class ticket at the U. S. price: loose beers, shelters with video games, even a week on a hunting ranch.
Both had borrowed thousands of dollars and paid more to secure what smugglers promised to be an adventure avoiding the worst risks of illegal border crossings.
On June 27, he finished his special remedy: crammed and out of breath in the back of a stifling semi in Texas with more than 60 other migrants.
Almost all of them, plus Ortega and Lopez, died in the sweltering heat. It is the deadliest American smuggling incident in recent times.
Their travels, reconstructed by Reuters through dozens of text messages, photos and videos with their families, offer a rare window into the world of human trafficking: a multibillion-dollar industry that is deadly.
While tighter controls expose migrants to greater risks, experts say smugglers are increasingly promoting more comfortable routes that tout them as “safe,” “special” or “VIP. “These features usually promise transportation in vehicles rather than crossing the desert on foot. as well as more comfortable stays.
Ortega agreed to pay $13,000 (S$17,898) and Lopez $12,000, their families said. That’s above the $2,000 to $7,000 average for Mexican immigrants, according to 2019 Mexican government data.
As they embarked separately on their quest for a better life, they were told they would do it alone or in small groups, their families said. At least one other victim, Jazmin Bueso, 37, from Honduras, also paid for the more expensive trip, her brother said. Reuters.
Ortega, a jovial 19-year-old dressed in baseball caps over his black hair, left in mid-May by bus from his home in Tlapacoyan, a mountainous town in the southeastern state of Veracruz surrounded by banana plantations.
Her friend had just become pregnant, and Ortega decided to go to Florida, where her mother lived. There, you could earn money to send home to care for your first child and save to build a house.
Lopez left Benito Juarez in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on June 8. Lopez, a 32-year-old sawmill worker, thin and dark-eyed and honest, hoped to send cash home to take care of the autism of the youngest of his 3 children. The call of this son: Thaddeus – tattooed on his left arm.
“You probably wouldn’t cross the desert. . . there will be no danger,” recalls Adriana González, after hearing the smuggler tell her husband on the phone before leaving.
“The one you have is guaranteed, one hundred percent safe. “
Violence, poverty and Covid-19 have accelerated migration from Latin America to the United States.
Crossings from Mexico hit a record 1. 7 million, so this fiscal year through June, while deaths were the worst on record with 728 last year and are expected to maintain speed or even exceed it in 2022.
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Seeking to escape U. S. border infrastructure In the ever-expanding U. S. , smugglers are turning to riskier methods, and add to the increased use of giant 18-wheeler trucks.
Border deaths related to vehicles and transportation rose faster than any cause, between 2020 and 2021, according to U. N. data.
To pay for smuggling expenses, Ortega’s mother, Rafaela Alvarez, 37, a cellular home.
But when he arrived at the border, guards said they sought an additional $2,000 to take him in a safer direction avoiding the desert, crossing the Rio Grande and traveling in a truck with 3 other people to Houston.
Alvarez pawned gold jewelry to find the extra silver. He remembers in particular that he warned his son not to get into a crowded caravan.
“The air is going to run out,” she told her in a video call from the structure where she worked and hoped he would too.
Over the next two weeks, Ortega sent photos and videos from a spacious, well-decorated space where he played video games and smugglers presented him with pizza and Tecate beer as he waited for the border patrol presence to subside.
Ortega nevertheless crossed the Rio Grande on May 29, but a U. S. agent caught him past the shore and sent him back to Mexico.
Lopez also didn’t cross the first time.
After flying in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, smugglers took him to the border with the city of Matamoros.
For 4 days, Lopez stayed in a small concrete space with two other migrants. The smugglers then guided Lopez across the Rio Grande in a boat and car, as promised.
But the next day, border agents stopped and sent Lopez back to Mexico.
On or around June 14 (his family is not entirely sure) Lopez crossed again, this time successfully. In Texas, he walked three hours through the desert to a private hunting lodge near Laredo, where he stayed for about a week.
A video Lopez sent to his wife shows a giant house, decorated with an American flag and wild deer skulls.
“It’s great,” Lopez says in the video.
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Meanwhile, Ortega had tried to cross. But the upper waters of the river made the task difficult. At one point, he saw a migrant drown in the strong current.
On June 17, he donned a red life jacket, gave a thumbs up in a selfie, and boarded a small inflatable boat for what would eventually be a successful trip.
A day later, he celebrated his twentieth birthday with a mayonnaise sandwich at a Texas hideout. Though now on U. S. soil, Ortega’s adventure is not over: the border patrol maintains checkpoints up to a hundred miles (161 km) inside.
“There’s a little bit left (to do),” he wrote to his sister. Two days later, she sent Ortega ultrasound photographs of her baby.
On June 21, Lopez made one last call to alert his circle of relatives that smugglers would soon confiscate his phone.
They were about to take him to a ranch where he would wait a few days before smuggling past an internal checkpoint on his way to San Antonio, Lopez told Gonzalez.
“Tell my kids that I love them and that if I manage, everything will be different,” Gonzalez recalls, referring to Lopez.
The next day, Ortega, still at his home in Texas, told his mother that he was starting to worry about the number of migrants arriving.
“We’re already a bunch of people,” he wrote.
Then it ceased.
At 2:50 p. m. (2:50 a. m. Singapore time) on June 27, an 18-wheeler shipping truck with a red 1995 Volvo cab passed through a U. S. government checkpoint. Near Encinal, Texas, 40 miles north of Laredo.
A surveillance photograph received through the Mexican government and in a data report shows the driver, dressed in a black striped shirt, leaning out the window with a wide smile.
Just before 6 p. m. , an employee of a commercial domain outside san Antonio, more than a hundred miles to the north, heard a call for help, which he followed to a deserted trailer on the side of a road, according to local officials. .
Lifeguards arrived a few minutes later. The trailer’s open doors revealed piles of bodies hot to the touch, authorities said. Other bodies were discovered on the floor and near the brush, according to court documents.
Temperatures in San Antonio had risen to 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39. 4 degrees Celsius) that afternoon, but first responders discovered there was no water or air conditioning in the trailer.
The death toll rose to 53, adding 26 Mexicans, 21 Guatemalans and six Hondurans. Police discovered the alleged driver hiding near the victims, allegedly under the influence of methamphetamine.
A U. S. Grand Jury The U. S. Department of Homeland Security has charged 4 men with charges similar to the incident, ranging from illegal possession of firearms to smuggling charges that can face life in prison or the death penalty.
By nightfall, the terrible news had spread through Mexico and Central America.
For more than a week, Lopez’s smugglers fueled her family’s hopes that she was still alive until Gonzalez learned of her husband’s frame through photographs on July 5.
Since his death, Gonzalez said he can’t afford to care for his autistic son.
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Alvarez, fearing the worst, called Ortega’s smugglers more than 30 times to verify that his son was alive. They blocked his number.
When Alvarez traveled to San Antonio to identify Ortega’s body, it was the first time he noticed his son since 2014.
At the funeral in his hometown, a ballad in memory of migrants who choked on a Texas van 35 years ago.
Ortega’s circle of relatives threw red roses at the grave as the words resounded: “The air has begun to run out and there is nothing they can do. No one has heard those cries for help. “
She expires on December 31.