Thirteen people killed in one of the deadliest crashes in the border area were part of 44 people who entered the United States illegally through a breach in California’s border fence with Mexico, an official said Wednesday of the Border Patrol.
The head of the agency for the Center sector, Gregory Boví, told a The Associated Press that there is a surveillance video showing how two SUV vans – a Ford Expedition and a Chevrolet Suburban – crossed the opening early Tuesday. They are believed to have been part of a migrant trafficking operation.
The Suburban carried 19 people and caught fire after entering American soil. They all escaped from the vehicle and were stopped by Border Patrol agents.
The Expedition, crowded with 25 people, continued north, before crashing shortly afterwards into a truck with a trailer. Ten of the 13 dead have been identified as Mexican citizens. The nationalities of the other three dead were still unknown. The rest of those who went to the van and the driver of the truck survived.
The Border Patrol said their agents were not chasing the vehicle before the crash.
The opening to the fence was about 48 kilometers (30 miles) east of the crash site, in the heart of California’s Imperial Valley, an important agricultural region.
The damaged fence was made of steel pylons and was built before former President Donald Trump covered much of this part of the border with higher barriers and go deeper into the ground.
“Human traffickers have shown time and time again that they have little regard for human life,” Boví said. “Those who may be thinking of crossing the border illegally they must stop to think about the dangers that too often end in tragedy“Tragedies with which our Border Patrol agents and lifeguards are unfortunately very familiar,” he added.
All Expedition seats were removed, except for the driver’s and co-pilot’s seats, to accommodate more passengers than normal, said Omar Watson, head of the California Road Patrol’s border division.
The cause of the crash has not yet been determined, authorities said. The vehicle was designed to transport eight people safely, But smugglers are known to often fill their vehicles with passengers in extremely unsafe conditions, in order to maximize their profits.
The shock occurred during the busiest part of the harvest season in the California agricultural region of Imperial Valley, which supplies much of the lettuce, onion, broccoli, and winter vegetables to U.S. supermarkets. Holtville, where the accident happened, is a small community that calls itself the world capital of carrots.
The area became an important route for illegal border crossings in the late 1990s. after an increase in patrols in the San Diego area caused traffickers to take migrants to more remote areas. Many crossed the All-American Canal, an aqueduct along the border that carries water from the Colorado River to farms through a wide network of canals.
Just a mile and a half from the crash site there is a pantheon where migrants who died crossing the border from Mexico are buried through the California desert. At the back of Terrace Park Cemetery in Holtville, rows of bricks mark the unidentified remains of people who died, among them many migrants.
Illegal crossings in the area fell sharply in the mid-2000s, however the area has continued to be attractive to migrant traffickers and was a priority for the construction of the border wall during Donald Trump’s presidency. The first project to build the wall was in Calexico, which borders the Mexican city of Mexicali.
JLMR
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