The investigation into the death of seven migrants found inside a railway cargo container in Texas took a new step with the formalization of charges against 11 alleged members of a human trafficking network, a case that US authorities consider one of the deadliest episodes linked to the use of freight trains to smuggle migrants on the border with Mexico.

The federal indictment, presented before a grand jury in the Western District of Texas, maintains that the defendants were part of an organization that, from at least April 2023 and until May 2026, used Union Pacific freight trains to smuggle people who had illegally crossed the border from Mexico into the interior of the United States. If convicted, all face a maximum penalty of life in prison, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported.

The case gained notoriety after the discovery, on May 10, of six bodies inside a Conex container at a train station in Laredo. A seventh migrant was found dead next to the tracks in San Antonio. Among the victims were four Mexican citizens, three Hondurans and a 14-year-old teenager. Authorities suspect they all died from hyperthermia or heat stroke.

According to the accusation, the traffickers transported the victims from Acuña, Coahuila, to the Del Río area, Texas. On May 9, they took advantage of the fact that a train was stopped to cut the lock of a cargo container with shears, introduce the seven migrants and reseal it from the outside.

The container, stacked on top of another car, had no ventilation or cooling system and could not be opened from the inside. That day, outside temperatures ranged between 31 and 33 degrees Celsius, conditions that, according to the Prosecutor's Office, made it practically impossible to survive during the journey.

U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas Justin R. Simmons described the tragedy as a death foretold.

“With that heat, being May in Texas, it is very difficult to survive in a sealed container without air conditioning… given the temperature that day,” he declared.

Simmons also revealed that at least one of the victims managed to communicate with a family member while he was dying.

“One of those people desperately contacted his family while dying from the suffocating heat inside the container.”

According to the investigation, when the train arrived in San Antonio the alleged traffickers opened the container, found the migrants in critical condition and left the place after leaving the body of one of them next to the tracks. The others remained locked up until, a day later, a Union Pacific worker noticed a leg sticking out of the container as the train arrived in Laredo.

The defendants include US citizens, permanent residents and people who remained in the United States without regular immigration status. Two of them remain at large, while the others were detained in operations coordinated by the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF), made up of the FBI, ICE-HSI, the Border Patrol, the DEA, the ATF and other federal and local agencies.