Immigrants were packed in trailer floor, officers report from traffic stop

By Marc Robertson - Editor | April 17, 2024

23 rescued after driver abandons truck beside highway

The rescue of more than 20 undocumented immigrants from an abandoned freighter in southern La Salle County was only made possible last week when occupants of the truck cab pointed Highway Patrol officers to the trailer’s floorboards.

A report by the Texas Highway Patrol on the traffic stop and examination of a tractor rig with a flatbed trailer carrying a John Deere earth mover indicates a trooper working in border security duty was making a routine examination of the vehicle Friday morning, April 12, when he became aware that the rig was being used for human smuggling.

The La Salle County Sheriff’s Office dispatched deputies to the scene near Milemarker 59, between Artesia Wells and Cotulla, and they were joined by La Salle County-based DPS troopers, agents of the US Border Patrol and medics of the La Salle Fire Rescue when the scale of the smuggling operation became apparent.

A total of 23 undocumented immigrants were evaluated by La Salle County emergency medical personnel last Friday and taken into US Border Patrol custody after Highway Patrol troopers and sheriff’s deputies found them in a tractor-trailer rig whose driver fled into the roadside brush. Twenty of the travelers had been fitted into spaces under the trailer’s floorboards.
(Photo courtesy of La Salle County Sheriff’s Office)

A report from La Salle Deputy Oscar Macias, Chief Deputy Elvira Gonzales and Lieutenant Homar Olivarez indicates the truck driver stopped his vehicle on the IH-35 east-side access road and leapt from the cab to abscond into the brush. Three passengers in the cab included a woman with a small child, the officers said.

All three were identified as undocumented immigrants.

“One of the passengers told the officers that there were more people in the truck,” the chief deputy said. “That’s when the secret compartment in the trailer floor was uncovered.”

Deputy Macias assisted in the removal, one by one, of flooring planks in the trailer to reveal twenty people who had been packed into a space between the chassis beams. The earth mover had been parked on top of them and anchored with chains.

“We had to move the John Deere to clear space for more floorboards to be lifted,” Gonzalez said of the rescue. “I don’t know how those people could have been packed in there.”

The travelers were evaluated by the county medics and taken into Border Patrol custody. None was listed as having suffered serious injury.

There have been no reports to date regarding the manhunt for the driver. Texas DPS officers deployed airborne surveillance to track the man through the brush but have not indicated whether he has been caught.