Border patrol agents in Texas caught nearly 200 undocumented immigrants hiding in three 18-wheeler trucks, including 115 who were sardined inside one compartment.
Authorities said that they tried to pull over the suspicious vehicle by turning on their patrol signs, but the truck kept going.
They eventually stopped the driver near mile marker 10 and a search revealed dozens of immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala hiding inside the truck.
Our border is under siege and it’s only getting worse! Is it really too much to ask for to get the Biden Administration to show some strong leadership and backbone to truly tackle this crisis at our southern border?https://t.co/NhukUxQ1gE
— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) March 21, 2022
“They’re lucky that it was a cold night in Laredo when that happened. Inside those trailers, it can get up to 115, 120 degrees, and then with that amount of people in there, it’s extremely dangerous,” said Sara Melendez, the spokeswoman for the U.S. Border Patrol Laredo sector.
Last week, 78 immigrants were found inside two other trucks. The drivers and immigrants are currently in custody.
This comes after Texas District Court Judge Mark Pittman ruled that the Biden administration cannot exempt minor migrants from Title 42, a controversial policy implemented by Trump back in March 2020 that allowed the U.S. Border Patrol to turn migrants away.
The Biden administration has continued to operate under that order, which they have argued is necessary to curb the spread of COVID-19 inside border detention facilities.
However, officials have declined to expel unaccompanied migrant children. Instead, they are transferred to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Pittman said that the Biden administration failed to properly justify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention orders that codified the exclusion of unaccompanied minors from Title 42, calling them “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of federal administrative law.
The judge also argued that Texas has been harmed financially as a result of the Title 42 exemptions because of education and medical costs for the migrant children now living in the state.
“The President has (arbitrarily) excepted COVID-19 positive unaccompanied alien children from Title 42 procedures—which were purposed with preventing the spread of COVID-19. As a result, border states such as Texas now uniquely bear the brunt of the ramifications,” Pittman wrote.
According to government data, more than 1.6 million illegal aliens have already been expelled since Title 42 was implemented.
