Migrants Recount Nightmare Journeys In US-bound Trucks

Ciudad Ju�rez, Mexico, July 1 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 1st Jul, 2022 ) :Jose Mario Licona and his family spent 18 hours in a refrigerated truck being smuggled to the Mexican-US border -- a journey he feels lucky to have survived.

Others have been less fortunate, including dozens of migrants from Mexico and Central America found dead on Monday after being abandoned in a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas. In all, 53 people died in the incident.

Licona knew all too well the dangers of entrusting his life to the criminal gangs trafficking migrants in trucks that are often overcrowded and lack ventilation.

But the smugglers -- who were paid $13,000 by his relatives to take him, his wife and three children to Texas -- left him with no choice, he said.

"When you make a deal, the first thing you ask (the smugglers) is not to be put in a container, but during the journey they do what they want," Licona told AFP in a shelter in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez.

"Often they leave the containers abandoned" with people shut inside, the 48-year-old Honduran said.

Licona, his wife and children aged two, six and eight traveled in a truck from Mexico City to the northeastern city of Reynosa, just south of Hidalgo, Texas.

Around 100 people were traveling in the same vehicle, which was not checked even once by Mexican authorities during the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) journey, Licona said.

From Reynosa the family crossed the border on foot, but they were sent back by the US authorities.