A survivor of the migrant trailer: ‘They couldn’t breathe’

Simple recommendation from a good friend to remain close to the door might have saved Yenifer Yulisa Cardona Tomás from the lethal destiny that befell fifty-three different migrants after they have been deserted and trapped in a sweltering semi-trailer final week on the sting of San Antonio.

Speaking by cellphone from her hospital mattress on Monday, the twenty-year-old from Guatemala’s capital stated it was already sizzling on June 27 when she stepped out of the warehouse on the Texas aspect of the Mexico border the place she had been ready and climbed into the again of the trailer.

She stated the smugglers confiscated their cellphones and coated the trailer’s flooring with what she believes was powdered hen bouillon, apparently to throw off any canine at checkpoints. As she sat stuffed contained in the stifling trailer with dozens of others, the powder stung her pores and skin.

Remembering her good friend’s warning to remain close to the door the place it will be cooler, Cardona Tomás shared the recommendation with one other good friend she had made in the course of the journey.“I told a friend that we shouldn’t go to the back and should stay near (the entrance), in the same place without moving,” stated Cardona Tomás. She is being handled at Methodist Hospital Metropolitan in San Antonio. That good friend survived, too.

As the truck moved on, making extra stops to select up extra migrants, folks started to cluster close to the door like Cardona Tomás. She had no strategy to observe the time.“The people were yelling, some cried. Mostly women were calling for it to stop and to open the doors because it was hot, that they couldn’t breathe,” she stated, nonetheless labouring a bit to talk after being intubated on the hospital.

She stated the motive force or another person within the cab yelled again that “we were about to arrive, that there were twenty minutes left, six minutes.” “People asked for water, some had run out, others carried some,” she added.

The truck would proceed stopping often, however simply earlier than she misplaced consciousness it was shifting slowly. She wakened within the hospital.

The driver and three others have been arrested and charged by US prosecutors.

Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry has stated that 20 Guatemalans died within the incident, 16 of whom have been positively recognized. Foreign Minister Mario Búcaro stated he hoped the primary our bodies could be repatriated this week. Cardona Tomás stated the truck’s vacation spot that day was Houston, although she was in the end headed to North Carolina.

“She didn’t have a job and asked me if I would support her” in migrating to the US, her father, Mynor Cordóna, stated Monday in Guatemala City, the place the household lives. He stated he knew of different instances of kids who simply left with out telling their households and ended up disappearing or dying so he determined to again her.

He paid $4,000 for a smuggler — lower than half the whole value — to take her to the U.S. She left Guatemala on May 30, touring in automobiles, buses and at last the semi-trailer in Texas.

“I didn’t know that she would travel in a trailer,” he stated. “She told us it would be by foot. It seems like at the last moment the smugglers decided to put (her) in the trailer, along with two more friends, who survived. One of them is still in critical condition.”

Cordóna had stayed in contact together with his daughter up till the morning of June 27. Her final message to him that Monday was at 10:28 a.m. in Guatemala, or 11:28 a.m. in Texas. “We’re going to go in an hour,” she wrote.

It was not till late that night time that Cardona Tomás’ household discovered of the deserted trailer. It was two extra days earlier than kinfolk within the United States confirmed that she was alive and hospitalized. “We cried so much,” Cordóna stated. “I even was thinking where we were going to have the wake and bury her. She is a miracle.”