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 News from Around the Americas | February 2007 
40 Immigrants Found in Trailer in Texas
 Associated Press
| | A vehicle drives along the US-Mexico border fence at sunset in an area where activists opposing illegal immigration search for border crossers near Campo, California. The US government is holding growing numbers of illegal immigrants in jails far from their lawyers and family, and even sometimes in tents, where their rights are not respected, civil liberties groups say. (AFP/David McNew) |
Forty Brazilian immigrants were found loaded inside a stifling tractor-trailer about 75 miles north of the Mexican border, authorities said. No injuries were reported.
Border Patrol agents discovered the immigrants Saturday at a highway checkpoint in Falfurrias, officials said. A patrol dog alerted agents to the scent of people.
"As soon as those agents opened the back of the trailer, they could just feel the heat coming from inside," said Border Patrol spokesman Oscar Saldana.
The driver, a U.S. citizen, was charged with smuggling, but his identity was being withheld.
The immigrants — including men, women and children — are being processed for deportation, officials said.
The discovery comes less than a month after a jury sentenced truck driver Tyrone Williams to life in prison for a May 2003 smuggling attempt in which 19 immigrants died in his trailer. |
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