EDINBURG, Texas (CN) – Officials in Texas continue to investigate the Sunday morning discovery of 17 immigrants who were found trapped inside of a locked tractor-trailer after a relative in Mexico led police to a Flying J truck stop near the border.
Seventeen immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Romania were recovered from the parked 18-wheeler in Edinburg, Texas, after being locked inside for eight to nine hours, police said.
None of the 14 men and three women were injured and federal agents with the U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security are now investigating.
Police detained a man and woman of Cuban nationality described as being in charge of the tractor-trailer on Sunday.
A U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint is about 60 miles north of Edinburg, which is located along the Texas/Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley, and would have subjected the truck to further inspection.
The incident Sunday comes less than a month after federal prosecutors charged 60-year-old James Matthew Bradley Jr. with human smuggling resulting in the deaths of 10 immigrants. San Antonio police found the 10 immigrants trapped inside a sweltering tractor-trailer in a Walmart parking lot on July 21.
Some of the immigrants there took turns breathing through a hole in the trailer wall, according to the federal complaint charging Bradley, of Clearwater, Fla.
Summer temperatures in Edinburg can reach well over 100 degrees.
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