Details on Arrests Made in Connection to Deaths of 51 Migrants in Cloned Semi-Truck Trailer

Migrant’s Covered in Steak Seasoning

The truck may have been carrying around 100 migrants, but the exact number remained unclear, according to local and federal law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.

It appeared the migrants had recently crossed the border and were picked up by the truck to be taken to where they would work, according to a Mexican official, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official, and another U.S. official, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss the matter.

Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio, said the death toll from Monday’s human smuggling incident makes it “the worst one we’ve seen in the U.S.”

Law enforcement officials said after being covered in the meat seasoning they were stuffed into a truck’s trailer that had been “cloned” to look like a legitimate truck.

Videos show the legitimate truck and DOT numbers under its Betancourt Trucking & Harvesting logo. The smuggler’s truck mimicked theirs and forged the DOT numbers but did not display the company’s primary logo.

Cloned Commercial Truck Used

The Volvo truck, a red tractor unit with a large white trailer, was found around 5:50 p.m. Monday after nearby workers heard cries for help and walked over to the tractor-trailer to investigate.

One person was outside the trailer, lying on the ground. The workers opened the doors and discovered dozens of stacked bodies inside, officials said. The semi-truck was first linked to an Alamo man, but an investigation revealed the smugglers had cloned that Texan’s license plate and registration.

‘His DOT Number was illegally copied onto the truck…’ Isaac Limon, whose father-in-law’s vehicle information had been stolen. ‘It was a perfect setup.’ The truck that actually belonged to Limon’s family had been out hauling grain in another part of Texas at the time of the incident.

 
The truck, which was traced to a trucking company based in the border town of Alamo, TX had actually been cloned, the company owners said. Human smuggling groups and cartels often replicate legitimate vehicles to use in illegal border crossings going so far as to create fake school buses with mannequins standing in as passengers.

The owners of Betancourt Trucking and Harvesting, Felipe Betancourt Sr. and his son, Felipe Jr. said someone cloned their truck, with the same color and identifying numbers from the federal Department of Transportation and the Texas Department of Transportation. However, the cloned truck does not bear the Betancourt logo, like their company vehicles do.

“Ours is sitting right here,” Felipe Jr. said by phone. “My truck doesn’t have a window on the side like the one in San Antonio. That one in San Antonio is not our trailer.” He said his father started the business in 2007 and bought the truck in 2020. He said the truck has been hauling grain from Harlingen to Progreso.