Police are investigating after six bodies were found in a train boxcar in a rural Texas town near the Mexican border.
A Union Pacific train worker found the bodies in a train yard in Laredo on Sunday afternoon.
It is not clear how the people died, but Laredo Police are investigating the grim discovery.
Officers attending the scene found one body on the ground and a partially opened gate to the seemingly abandoned tractor-trailer.
A team from U.S. Homeland Security opened an investigation into ‘an alleged human smuggling event’, in coordination with local police.
It is also unclear whether the bodies found belong to migrants, but a similar incident in 2022 saw 46 people found dead in the back of a trailer in San Antonio.
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the 46 people who died had ‘families who were likely trying to find a better life.’
‘This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy,’ he added.
South Texas has long been a hotspot for illegal migration, often passing through San Antonio – the closest major city on the US-Mexico border – before travelling onwards across the United States.
In 2019, the UK saw a similar tragic incident when 39 people were found dead in a lorry container which crossed the English Channel twice in one week.
The vehicle visited Belgium three times, stopping off in Dunkirk and Calais.
The victims arrived in the UK in Purfleet, a port in Essex, where it was driven to an industrial estate.
Ten people were convicted of crimes relating to the incident, including the lorry’s driver – Mo Robinson, from County Armagh, Northern Ireland – who was jailed for manslaughter.
