4 men arrested in deaths last year of 53 migrants trapped inside tractor-trailer

A man tacks a poem to a cross at a makeshift memorial where dozens of migrants were found dead in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio. U.S. authorities have announced the arrests of four men who they say were part of a human smuggling effort last year that ended in the deaths of 53 migrants — including eight children — left inside a tractor-trailer in the scorching Texas heat. Authorities said Tuesday — the anniversary of the tragedy — that the four Mexican nationals had a planning role in the smuggling operation and knew the trailer’s air-conditioning unit was not working during the migrants’ three-hour ride from the border city of Laredo to San Antonio. A federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday reveals some details of a “patchwork association” of smugglers that allowed them to “consolidate costs, spread out risk and operate more profitably.” The indictment alleges that the men worked with human smuggling operations in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and shared routes, guides, stash houses, trucks and trailers, some of which were stored at a private parking lot in San Antonio. Another survivor, Adan Lara Vega, said that the truck was already hot when it left Laredo and that the trapped migrants soon started crying and pleading for water.