Eleven people charged in connection with the deaths of several immigrants in a freight car

A federal grand jury indicted eleven people for allegedly orchestrating an immigrant crossing in May that resulted in the deaths of seven of them who were aboard a freight car, the Department of Justice reported on Friday.

From at least April 2023 through May of this year, the defendants transported numerous undocumented immigrants via freight trains. The migrants or their families paid between $1,500 and $10,000 for the crossings, the department explained in a statement.

In the early morning hours of May 9, at least seven migrants were smuggled by traffickers into a Union Pacific freight car in Del Rio, Texas on the border with Mexico.

The freight container had no ventilation whatsoever, and the outside temperature was well above 87°F.

The train departed for San Antonio, where the smugglers reopened the container and saw that the migrants were in danger, so they fled.

The train continued on its way. "On May 10, a Union Pacific railyard worker in Laredo saw a leg sticking out of a Conex freight container. Upon inspection, six deceased foreign nationals were discovered inside the container," the department explained.

Another migrant was found dead on the railroad tracks in San Antonio.

Of the seven deceased, four were Mexican and three were Honduran. One of them was 14 years old.

A woman, Mayra Alekandra Huerta, was arrested shortly after the tragedy in Del Rio, and eight other suspects were detained last week in Texas. Two remain at large.

Illegal immigrant crossings regularly lead to tragedies along Mexico's southern border.

In 2022, 53 migrants died after being abandoned in a trailer amid extreme temperatures on a remote highway in Texas.