by For the second day in a row, the death occurred on a Texas freight train, this time at Eagle Pass, where one person was found dead and three others were injured, authorities said Sunday.
Someone inside a freight train car in the small border town called 911 to report distress Saturday afternoon, and responding U.S. Border Patrol agents found 12 people inside, Union Railroad reported. Pacific.
One of the 12 was dead and three others were hospitalized, the railway said. Their conditions were not available.
Eight others were detained, Union Pacific said.
The stopped car was at a Union Pacific rail yard, he said. The discovery follows the separate report Friday of 15 suspected immigrants aboard a freight train about 70 miles northeast of the Saturday incident.
Friday’s report was made in Uvalde County, near the small town of Knippa, authorities said. Two of the 15 were dead and 10 were hospitalized, Uvalde city police said.
Four of the 10 who needed hospitalization had injuries urgent enough that they were taken to hospitals in San Antonio, the Union Pacific said in a statement Friday.
Two of them were men who ended up at San Antonio’s high-level trauma center, University Hospital, where one was in critical condition and another in serious condition, a hospital spokesman said.
Someone on the train in Uvalde County had also called 911 to report a medical emergency involving “asphyxiated” patients, Uvalde police said in their own statement.
The exact cause of the medical emergencies on both trains, which use the same line that runs from the US-Mexico border to San Antonio and beyond, was not available.
The weather for both Eagle Pass and Uvalde County has been warm, with high temperatures forecast for Sunday reaching 90 degrees or higher, according to the National Weather Service.
Illegal border crossings from the Southwest remained as low as they have been since the first full month of President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021, according to February figures from the US Customs and Border Protection.
The drop in numbers came after the administration announced a new policy in which Mexico would accept back Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan asylum seekers under a policy aimed at limiting US exposure to migrants with illnesses. including covid-19.
It was not immediately clear if the freight train discoveries are a coincidence or represent a new wave of migration among those desperate to reach the United States from points south.
“These incidents are a grim reminder of why we do everything we can to prevent people from trespassing on our property and our trains,” Union Pacific said in its Sunday statement.
Other modes of travel have also suffered tragedy in recent months.
On March 11, two suspected migrant smuggling boats ran aground near each other in cold, rough seas off Blacks Beach in San Diego, where lifeguards found eight people dead, authorities said.
And on March 17, an 18-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of human smuggling and police evasion after he allegedly led authorities on a vehicle chase in El Paso that ended in a crash that killed a passenger. 26-year-old Mexican who thinks he is. being in the country illegally, NBC affiliate KTSM of El Paso reported.
Antonio Cusumano contributed.
