people smuggling

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What We Know About the Migrant Truck Deaths
What We Know About
the Migrant Truck Deaths
the rundown

What We Know About the Migrant Truck Deaths

With number of fatalities at 50, it's the worst such smuggling tragedy in reported US history

(Newser) - The discovery of dozens of dead migrants in a truck in San Antonio, Texas, on Monday is the deadliest such incident in US history, reports the Washington Post . As of Tuesday morning, the death toll was at 50, per the AP , but others remained hospitalized. Three suspects are in custody,...

Migrants' 911 Calls Spur Search for Truck: 'We Are Dying'

Local authorities in San Antonio, DHS desperately seeking white tanker that may have 80 trapped

(Newser) - Authorities from the San Antonio Police Department, Bexar County Sheriff's Office, Texas Department of Public Safety, and even the Department of Homeland Security have embarked on a desperate search for a tanker truck that may be crammed with dozens of trapped migrants in a human smuggling operation. Sheriff Javier...

CBP: Girl From India Dies in Desert on Way to US

Death took place in 'dangerous and austere location' in Arizona

(Newser) - The body of a 7-year-old girl believed to be from India was found this week in a remote part of the Arizona desert just over the border with Mexico, a death that a Border Patrol official is calling "senseless," reports the Daily Beast . Per a Customs and Border...

10 Immigrants Died in a Truck. The Driver Just Pleaded Guilty

James Matthew Bradley Jr. could face life in prison at sentencing

(Newser) - The driver of a semitrailer packed with at least 39 immigrants, 10 of whom died, pleaded guilty Monday to making the deadly smuggling run. James Matthew Bradley Jr., 61, pleaded Monday in federal court in San Antonio to one conspiracy count and a count of transporting the immigrants resulting in...

White Sox Player Ate His Passport on a Plane

Jose Abreu testified he had to get rid of fake doc before landing in US

(Newser) - Some people snack on the peanuts offered on airline flights; Jose Abreu scarfs down beer and pieces of his passport. That's what the first baseman for the Chicago White Sox testified Wednesday in Miami at a trial for a baseball agent and a trainer accused of smuggling Cuban baseball...

20 Children Ditched by Smugglers Perish in Sahara

They were part of a group of 34 migrants

(Newser) - A group of nearly three dozen migrants, most of them kids, paid smugglers to whisk them out of Niger and Nigeria and to a new life to the north—but instead paid the ultimate price. The five men, nine women, and 20 minors were found dead Sunday in the Sahara,...

Week's Migrant Death Toll: Nearly That of the Titanic

'31 times the number who died when the Costa Concordia sank'

(Newser) - "That is almost as many as died in the Titanic, and 31 times the number who died when the Costa Concordia sank." That's how a rep with Save the Children describes what's happened in the Mediterranean in the last week. The AP reports the death toll...

Cops Find 'Sea of People' Held Hostage in Texas Home

Smugglers held more than 100 inside squalid Houston 'stash house'

(Newser) - Police staking out a squalid Houston home have uncovered the city's largest stash house in recent years, and it's pretty grim: The building was covered in human waste, had no hot water, and just one partially-working toilet for the more than 100 people held hostage inside. After a...

Dozens Drown in Doomed Effort to Flee Haiti

Migrants' boat capsized in Bahamas

(Newser) - Up to 30 Haitian migrants died yesterday in a doomed attempt to get out of their desperately poor homeland. Coast Guard officials say a "grossly overloaded, unbalanced, unseaworthy" sailboat carrying around 150 migrants hit a reef and capsized near Staniel Cay in the Bahamas, the AP reports. The Bahamas...

Dozens of Asylum Seekers Drown off Indonesia

And many more still missing after boat headed to Australia sinks

(Newser) - At least 31 people have drowned after a boat carrying asylum seekers from Indonesia to Australia capsized on Friday, and dozens more are still missing, the ABC reports. The asylum seekers were from Lebanon, Pakistan, and Iraq, and were headed to Australia's Christmas Island when the boat was hit...

75 Arrested in Human Trafficking Ring Bust

Gang smuggled Chinese citizens into US and Europe for $53K per person, say cops

(Newser) - Police have arrested 51 people in Spain and 24 in France after a two-year investigation into a Barcelona-based organization that was allegedly smuggling Chinese migrants into the US and Europe. Authorities say the gang charged $53,000 per person for "false identities and transport [for] Chinese citizens to the...

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