In San Antonio Smuggling Case, a Fatal Journey in a Packed and Sweltering Truck
July 25, 2017 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
They banged on the trailer’s walls, to get the driver’s attention, but the truck did not stop. The driver later told federal investigators what the immigrants may have soon discovered: that the trailer’s cooling system did not work and its four vent holes were probably clogged. But the immigrants found a small vent hole that was open, and took turns breathing through it to get some air.
The driver finally put the brakes on, and the immigrants were so weak that they fell over. The door opened again, this time in the parking lot of a San Antonio Walmart early Sunday, revealing a horrific scene of bodies upon bodies.
Ten people died during the journey or later at hospitals. Nearly 30 others were hospitalized.
The descriptions of the immigrants’ journey, as told to federal investigators, were revealed in a criminal complaint as the driver of the truck was arraigned in federal court on Monday in San Antonio. The driver, James M. Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Fla., was charged under a federal law against knowingly transporting people who are in the country illegally — a law that provides for an unlimited prison term or capital punishment, if the crime results in a death.
Even as President Trump has made it clear that he will not tolerate illegal immigration, the tragedy illustrated the extremes people will go to to sneak into the United States and opened a window into human smuggling at the border, a clandestine world of drug cartels, rafts, “stash houses” and empty promises.
It quickly became a political issue in Texas. The Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who has long denounced illegal immigration, took to social media to link the case to the state’s new and highly controversial law banning so-called sanctuary cities — those that do not cooperate with immigration agencies.
“Sanctuary cities entice people to believe they can come to America and Texas and live outside the law,” Mr. Patrick wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. “Sanctuary cities also enable human smugglers and cartels. Today, these people paid a terrible price and demonstrate why we need a secure border and legal immigration reform.”
State Representative Eddie Rodriguez, a Democrat, said the comments went “too far.”
Mr. Rodriguez said in a statement that when “10 people from any background perish under such horrific circumstances, it is an occasion deserving of solemnity and respect, not self-indulgent cheerleading.”
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Much was still unanswered on Monday, including exactly how many people had been in the truck, and how they managed to get to San Antonio undetected, since it was likely that the driver passed through a Border Patrol traffic checkpoint at some point after leaving Laredo.
Survivors who were interviewed by investigators said they had been loaded into the trailer from various locations in or near Laredo. Many of the details in the criminal complaint came from an immigrant who was hospitalized and who was referred to by the initials J.M.M.-J.
He was from Aguascalientes, Mexico, and with a group of 28 others had crossed the Rio Grande by raft in three trips. In addition to $5,500 he would owe his smugglers when he got to his final destination in San Antonio, people with ties to the Mexican criminal organization known as the Zetas cartel were paid in pesos for protection and for the raft crossing.
The Mexican man and the others in his group then hiked through the South Texas brush until the next day, when they were picked up by a vehicle and driven to the trailer. Another immigrant described waiting in a stash house in Laredo for 11 days with 23 other people before being loaded into the trailer.
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A third survivor, who was identified in the complaint by the initials H.L.-C. and was headed to Minnesota, told investigators that he and his brother crossed through in Laredo. “He stated he thought there were approximately 180 to 200 people in the tractor-trailer when he got in,” the complaint said.
By the time the police came to the truck Sunday morning, alerted by a Walmart employee, a number of immigrants had already fled, either in vehicles that picked them up before the police arrived or on foot.
The bodies of the 10 dead, all adult men, have been taken to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, which is working with other agencies to determine their identities, a spokeswoman said. Officials with the Mexican Consulate are also assisting. The men’s bodies will be returned to their families once their identities are established, a process involving fingerprint and DNA checks and other forensic tools that could take considerable time.
One man was a Guatemalan who had previously lived in the United States as a so-called Dreamer, one of the young immigrants protected from deportation by an Obama administration policy. But he had lost his protection because of a conviction for larceny and aggravated assault, said Silvia Mintz, a lawyer working for the Guatemalan Consulate in Houston.
How the survivors’ immigration status will be handled in the coming weeks remained unclear. All were in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration lawyers said they should be regarded as crime victims, and as witnesses to a crime, which in some cases can protect them from deportation.
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“We are exploring every avenue, and hopefully we can get them some immigration relief,” Ms. Mintz said.
On Monday morning, the driver, Mr. Bradley, made a brief appearance in Federal District Court, answering, “Yes, I do,” when Judge Betsy Chestney asked if he understood the maximum penalties. It was unclear whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty, which is infrequently used in federal court.
Mr. Bradley told federal authorities that he was unaware of his human cargo. According to court documents, Mr. Bradley said when he stopped at Walmart to urinate, he heard movement in the trailer and opened it.
He said he was knocked down by fleeing immigrants and said “he then noticed bodies just lying on the floor like meat,” according to the criminal complaint.
Mr. Bradley said he tried to administer aid, but he did not call 911.
Mr. Bradley’s remarks to investigators raised a host of questions, including why he ended up in San Antonio at all. He told investigators that his ultimate destination was Brownsville, where he was supposed to deliver the trailer to its new owner. Mr. Bradley told investigators, however, that he was not given a delivery address in Brownsville. In addition, if the truck was in Laredo and bound for Brownsville, San Antonio is in the opposite direction.
Court records from Colorado and Florida appear to show a criminal history for Mr. Bradley. Those records belong to a James Bradley with the middle initial B., rather than M., of the same age and general physical appearance.
In 1996, James B. Bradley was arrested by the Aurora, Colo., police and charged with menacing with a deadly weapon and assault. He pleaded guilty in 1997 to a single felony charge and was sentenced to two years’ probation, but records show that the probation was revoked multiple times, putting him back in jail. In 2004, he was arrested in Tampa, Fla., while driving a car that had been reported stolen, and was charged with grand theft auto. State records do not make clear how the case was resolved.
Mr. Bradley’s nephew, Alton C. Bradley, 50, said he was shocked by the news of his uncle’s arrest.
“When I was talking with my aunts and sister, we couldn’t believe it was him pulling those immigrants behind in that trailer,” he said by telephone from Land O’ Lakes, Fla., adding that his uncle was always hauling produce, meat, seafood and more all over the country.
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“Just regular stuff that you haul from state to state, but nothing that was ever illegal,” he said. “So that’s why this is pretty shocking.”
Correction: July 24, 2017
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect description for the sentence for Tyrone Williams, a truck driver who was convicted in the deaths of 19 people in 2003. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole, but in 2010, a federal appellate court overturned his 19 life sentences. He was resentenced to 34 years in prison.
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