The Frio County Sheriff’s Office told KENS 5 that the incident took place around noon on Monday in Pearsall and that all the migrants were apprehended, although they did not specify where they were transferred.
The driver of the truck was arrested and placed in federal custody.
In response to the surge in migrants and human-smuggling operations in south Texas, the state is preparing to open up new shelters to hold the overflow of people.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said there are discussions about possibly repurposing San Antonio’s Freeman Coliseum as a migrant site as early as next week for an undetermined number of people.
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at a Tuesday briefing that the city would be prepared to provide assistance should it be required.
“What’s happening on the border, as we’ve seen before, is just an incredible human tragedy,” Nirenberg said. “My hope is that what happens going forward is treated with the utmost compassion and care.”
The Biden administration is struggling to care for the record number of unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border since President Joe Biden took office. Rather than sending these children back across the border, Biden has required Border Patrol to transfer the migrant youth to federal shelters before placing them with family in the U.S. while they await their immigration cases.
Texas has felt a large brunt of the influx of migrants who are seeking to find a new home in the U.S.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has blamed the Biden administration’s border policy for the surge. In a letter to the president, Abbott demanded answers to what he referred to as a “humanitarian crisis at the southern border.”
“Recent decisions by your administration are emboldening dangerous cartels, smugglers, and human traffickers to ramp up their criminal operations,” Abbott wrote on Tuesday. “In many cases, these criminals entice unaccompanied minors into inhumane conditions and expose them to abuse and terror.”
This week, the Biden administration announced it will add two more influx facilities to shelter the migrant youth in Texas and has asked the Pentagon to provide beds.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed that the Department of Defense “has received a request for assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services to temporarily house unaccompanied migrant children” at Joint Base San Antonio and Fort Bliss in El Paso.
There are currently 11,350 children in the department’s shelter network.
The overflow facilities have been criticized by child advocates, who argue that the emergency shelters result in crowded conditions for the young migrants. However, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has defended these shelters, saying they “will help ensure children are moved into ORR shelters, where children receive educational, medical, mental health, and recreational services until they can be unified with families or sponsors without undue delay.”
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol for comment, but did not hear back before publication.
