Last week, Texas police found 25 illegal immigrants, including an 11-year-old, “crammed” inside a box truck in the scorching Texas heat.
The alleged smuggler driving the vehicle claimed to be only transporting mattresses, according to dramatic bodycam evidence.
According to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety, officers found the group inside a crawl space inside the box truck wall, where there was “little-to-no ventilation,” after opening the locked vehicle and moving thirty mattresses out of the way.
Twelve women and an 11-year-old child were among the more than two dozen illegal immigrants who were observed leaving. Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, India, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic were among their countries of origin.
Silvia Patricia Santamaria, 43, the belly-baring truck driver, was shown in the film informing a state trooper that she had traveled from Alton, Texas, a border town, where she had picked up “some mattresses,” and that she was going north to Houston.
An cop was heard saying, “We got young kids too,” and requesting an ambulance. Then he handed out a big bottle of water, and several of the refugees took a sip from the jug.
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In a flash, Santamaria was handcuffed. She faces 25 counts of smuggling people. They turned the illegal immigrants over to the Border Patrol.
According to Homeland Security sources, traffickers are frantically looking for new ways to enter the US illegally in order to maintain their huge profits as President Trump continues to crack down on the border and illegal immigration.
Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told The Post last week that the cartels would remain a concern for the United States as long as they were in power and controlled Mexico as they currently do.
He went on to say that the federal government has greater “manpower” under Trump since illegal immigration has fallen to all-time lows, which helps them apprehend traffickers.
