Texas cops discovered 25 illegal immigrants — including an 11-year-old — “crammed” inside a box truck in the sweltering Texas heat last week — and the alleged smuggler behind the wheel said she was just hauling mattresses, dramatic bodycam footage showed.
Officers opened the locked truck and moved 30 mattresses out of the way before discovering the group inside a crawl space within the box truck wall, where there was “little-to-no ventilation,” the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.
More than two dozen illegal immigrants could be seen walking out, including a dozen women and an 11-year-old child. They hailed from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, India, Cuba, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
The belly-baring truck driver, who has been identified as Silvia Patricia Santamaria, 43, was seen in the video telling a state trooper that she had come from the border town of Alton, Texas, where she had picked up “some mattresses” and was heading north to Houston.
An officer could be heard calling for an ambulance, saying, “We got young kids too.” He then passed around a large water bottle as some of the migrants sipped from the jug.
Santamaria was quickly cuffed. She is charged with 25 counts of human smuggling.
The illegal immigrants were handed over to Border Patrol.
As President Trump continues to crack down on the border and illegal immigration, smugglers are desperately trying to find new ways to sneak migrants into the US without getting caught to keep their profits high, Homeland Security sources have told The Post.
“As long as the cartels are around and control Mexico like they do now, they’re going to be problematic for the United States,” National Border Patrol Council President Paul Perez told The Post last week.
He added that the feds have more “manpower” under Trump, with illegal immigration dropping to record lows that make them better at catching smugglers.
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