[ad_1]
In a frightening 911 call, a migrant tells dispatchers that he and about 80 other people are trapped in a white tanker unable to breathe.
“We can’t see anything. We’re inside a tank truck. God, we don’t have oxygen,” the caller told the dispatcher in Spanish. A man can also be heard in the background begging in Spanish, “Help! Blessed God!” as he has trouble breathing.
In the background, other people can be heard screaming for help in Spanish and saying they are out of air.
The call, which took place on Monday but was obtained by NBC’s sister network Telemundo on Thursday, sparked a search for migrants in Texas. Surveillance footage shows the tanker in the San Antonio area.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official told NBC News in an email that the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, along with local law enforcement partners, was still looking for a “possible human trafficking event”.
Authorities are now asking the public for help in finding the tanker, where some people may have already died, Telemundo reported.
“I’m only interested in whether these people are okay. I’m not interested in arresting the people who were inside the truck,” said Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, whose jurisdiction understands San Antonio, in Telemundo in Spanish.
The investigation comes as arrests of migrants at the US-Mexico border have increased after a sharp drop at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In January, US authorities met nearly 78,000 migrants who were attempting to cross the southern border illegally or who were refused entry at entry points, a 6% increase from the previous month.
Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Reuters contributed.
[ad_2]
Source link