In June of 2022, an abandoned tractor trailer was found in San Antonio. Inside, more than sixty migrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras who had crossed the border illegally were trapped.
Without air conditioning on a day when temperatures had reached nearly a hundred degrees, the situation had already spiraled out of control by the time authorities had arrived to release them from the truck.
In total, 53 people died as a result from the incident ranging in ages from 13 to 55. To date, the event is among the deadliest smuggling disasters in American history.
Coming up on two years after it all happened, Texas Monthly contributor Elliott Woods has gotten in touch with some of the families affected. He reported the story in partnership with the Food & Environment Reporting Network and joined Texas Standard to share what he learned. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: This event has come to be known as the “Quintana Road incident,” because that’s the name of the street where the migrants were found. Do we know why they were abandoned on the side of the road in the first place?
Elliott Woods: Well, the reason that they were abandoned is because the place where the truck was left was the actual rendezvous point for the tractor trailer and the other elements of the human smuggling operation that were going to take the people to their various next destinations.
So when those people met up with the truck and went to open the back, is when they discovered that there were all of these bodies inside, that the air conditioning unit had not been working. And so the other smugglers who showed up to help transport the people to their next destination fled as soon as they could.
And the driver of the truck ran and hid in the bushes and tried to pass himself off as one of the migrants, but was arrested that day. So that’s why it was abandoned where it was. And the reason they abandoned it is because they quickly realized what had gone wrong.
You know, it was just a horrific scene. And I guess people heard some of the migrants calling out for help and alerted authorities.
That’s right.
Since all of this unfolded, authorities have arrested seven people. What do we know about them? And where do these legal proceedings stand right now?
So what we know about them is that there were seven people arrested in the U.S. since 2022 in relation to this incident, and six of them were wrapped under a single indictment. The other was charged with the minor charges that ended up having apparently nothing to do with this case.
Of the six that remained under the indictment related to this case, four of them were Mexican nationals, and five of them have already pleaded guilty to the various charges.
So there was the driver whose name was Homero Zamorano. I know he pleaded guilty in January of 2025. There was the person who was originally described as the ringleader. His name was Christian Martinez. He’s from Palestine, Texas. He pleaded guilty, I think more than a year ago. Both of those guys were from the U.S.
And then there were four Mexican nationals who were also arrested and charged with conspiracy to transport aliens leading to death, and they, according to the Department of Justice press releases, had some involvement in organizing the passenger lists, coordinating the stash house, making sure that people got loaded onto the truck, etc.
Two of those people will start trial today, actually, in San Antonio. But yeah, they face trial today and they’ll be the first people to actually go to trial in relation to this case.
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For Texas Monthly, you spent time talking with families affected by the events. What did they tell you?
The families told me that, I mean, obviously the devastation is extreme and the economic consequences of losing someone who was anticipated to be a breadwinner have been severe. So along with the grief, there’s also a lot of financial hardship.
Some people put up their houses or their agricultural land as collateral for loans that they took to pay the smuggling fee, and now they still have to pay those loans, but they don’t have the income that they were hoping for from their loved ones. So the damage is extreme from this incident down in Mexico and Central America.
Some of the families have more young children or somebody else in the family who’s still trying to decide whether to make another attempt to migrate. Other families said, “we’ll never do this again.”
But my general sense was that the economic disparities are so great between our country and the countries to the south of our border, and the economic opportunities are so few. People will continue to take the risk to get into this country, to work in spite of the danger.
Correction: A previous version of this story said Elliott Woods was in contact with survivors of the incident. This has been updated to reflect that he was in contact with family members of survivors, rather than the survivors themselves.
