Eric Gay / AP
"How smugglers use trucks with sometimes deadly results," by AP's Michael Tarm:
- "Border officials have reported an uptick in the number of people-smuggling incidents using tractor-trailers. That included one on July 7, when Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas, found 72 people from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador locked inside a trailer."
- "A recent report from European-based global -risk group Verisk Maplecroft suggests that a harder line on border security by the Trump administration might be leading migrants to accept the risks of more dangerous smuggling methods."
- "[I]mmigrants ... typically [don't want] to remain in [the] border area. Most hope to make it to large U.S. cities ... where they may have jobs or family waiting."
- Why it happens: "Smugglers know there are hundreds and thousands of immigrants desperate to get away from the border as fast as possible. ... The more people they can move at one time, the more the profit."