11 people indicted over deaths of six people in cargo container in Texas

A US attorney announced a federal indictment on Friday against 11 people in the smuggling deaths of six migrants whose bodies were found in a rail cargo container in Texas in May.The six people were found dead in a rail yard shipping container in Laredo, on the US-Mexico border. They were from Honduras and Mexico and included a 14-year-old boy, all part of a human-smuggling effort on a freight train, authorities said.The oldest victim was 56. Laredo is home to a popular land port teeming with trade activity between Mexico and the US, which had led investigators to believe early on that the deaths were the result of smuggling.The bodies were discovered by a Union Pacific employee. The Webb county medical examiner suspected the deaths were caused by hyperthermia, or heatstroke.Smuggling on trains has long been a concern partly because trains headed to the US often slow or stop in Mexico before crossing the border. That creates an opportunity for smugglers or immigrants to climb onboard or hide drugs or other contraband on a train before it enters the US.“It’s very hard to survive in an un-air-conditioned, sealed container with … the temperature being what it was on that day,” the US attorney for the western district of Texas, Justin Simmons, said on Friday.At the time of the tragedy, Paul Nixon, a retired teacher and volunteer with the Arizona-based humanitarian organization Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans, said he was familiar with what would drive people to risk hiding on a train.“We’ve talked to people who have just had brutal on-foot overland travel with so much Cartel Abuse, [so] if there was an alternative, it just seems to me that that might be one of the things that people would do,” Nixon said. He said the climate crisis was making already extreme conditions worse in the border region.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But people will get into a boxcar and somebody will close the door and just forget that they’re there,” he said. “I mean, that’s a death sentence right there,” he said.The Associated Press contributed reporting