Court filings allege that the driver of a vehicle in Texas where 53 migrants died of heat exhaustion was unaware that the air conditioner had broken down.
Officials said they located Homero Zamorano, 45, hiding beside the vehicle on Monday. Among those accused is him.
Christian Martnez, 28, and Mr. Zamorano are accus of exchanging texts before and after the car was discovered.
Until now, this has been the worst US human trafficking occurrence.
Several teenage passengers are still in the hospital. Mexican, Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan victims.
Found: Mr. Zamorano had been hiding in the woods. Initially, Mexican authorities believe, he attempted to pass himself off as a survivor of the earthquake.
He was apprehended when a US Border Patrol checkpoint in Laredo, Texas, captured him driving the vehicle past on camera.
A confidential government informant working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Texas police informed agents that Mr. Zamorano and Mr. Martnez had communicated after the killings were reported, according to federal court records.
“The driver was unaware the air conditioning unit stopped functioning,” Mr. Martnez reportedly remarked. “The driver was the cause for the deaths.”
Something more
A chat between the informant and Martnez took place within a few feet of each other, according to papers.
If convicted on smuggling and conspiracy charges, both individuals risk the death sentence.
Juan Claudio D’Luna-Méndez and Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao, two more individuals suspected of involvement, have been charged with guns possession and unlawful entry into the United States. They are both citizens of Mexico.
In addition to the 27 Mexicans who perished, there were also 14 Hondurans, seven Guatemalans, and two Salvadorans in the list of those who perished in the attack.
Although Mexican officials claim that 67 migrants were aboard, San Antonio’s district attorney’s office believes that the number is 64.
“Conclusively identified” six of the 53 victims of Monday’s event by the Bexar County medical examiner’s office on Friday.
42 “possible identifications” have also been made.
Five of them are still unaccounted for.
It was also on Friday that the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office started looking into a second abandoned 18-wheeler that was spotted just north of the first one.
In the latest car, officials found 13 migrants.
“Preliminarily, it looks no victims have incurred any major injuries,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.
Along the US-Mexico border, people smuggling is a huge business.
In May, the U.S. captured a record 239,000 illegal Mexican migrants.
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