TEXAS Details emerge in immigrant smuggling

The trucker said he was offered $5,000 to take the group to Houston.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DALLAS -- Oscar Estrada planned to pay $1,000 for an illegal trailer-truck ride to a better life. What he got was the horror of being trapped for hours in a crowded, sweltering trailer as other undocumented immigrants around him died.
The driver, Tyrone Williams, says he didn't know there were problems until he opened the door to the trailer, saw people lying on the floor and heard a woman screaming in Spanish that a baby needed help. "There appeared to be something wrong with them," Williams told investigators who found him at a Houston hospital Wednesday.
The accounts were part of a federal criminal complaint filed Thursday in Houston against Williams, 32, of Schenectady, N.Y., and three others identified only as Joe, Abel and Fatima, last names unknown. The charges: conspiring to harbor and smuggle aliens.
18 deaths
Eighteen people, all of them believed to have been undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, died in the trailer, found near a Victoria truck stop early Wednesday morning. Six others remained hospitalized Thursday, two in the intensive care unit of a Victoria hospital. Forty-five others were in custody of federal officials in the Victoria Community Center.
In Houston, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Milloy outlined the charges against Williams, a bespectacled man of medium height and slender build. He answered her questions with a Jamaican accent, saying his wife was trying to hire a lawyer. The judge postponed the hearing pending determination whether he can hire a lawyer. She ordered him kept in federal custody.
Williams, whose wife, Karen, said he was a legal U.S. resident from Jamaica and a produce hauler based in New York, had entered into a deal with "Joe" and "Abel" and had picked the immigrants up on an isolated road outside Harlingen on Tuesday evening, according to the complaint. He said he expected to be paid $2,500 to drive the group, which he thought numbered about 16, to Robstown. Later, he said, he was promised an additional $2,500 to take them on to Houston.
What survivors said
Eduardo Ibarrola, Mexico's consul general in Houston, said in Victoria on Thursday that survivors told him they had been smuggled across the border in small groups in the days preceding Tuesday. He said few of them even realized the danger as they stepped into the trailer and the doors were locked behind them.
"They suffered tremendously, from the extreme heat, lack of water and lack of oxygen," Ibarrola said. "Somewhere along the way, they managed to break through some kind of hole and broke one of the back lights, hoping to attract attention.
"They were screaming and banging on the side of the trailer," he said. "Maybe that is what caused the driver to finally stop."
Williams told investigators that he pulled off the road near Victoria when he saw a light dangling from the rear of his trailer, according to the complaint filed in Houston. When he heard banging and screaming coming from the trailer, he said, he opened the door and saw dozens of people -- the complaint puts the number at 85, but authorities say it may go higher -- and that many were sick or dying.
Distributed water
He told officials that he bought bottles of water at a nearby truck stop and distributed them to those in the trailer, then unhooked the tractor and began driving north.
Estrada, an immigrant who survived, told investigators that a woman with Williams helped distribute water and that she had helped Williams unhook the tractor and flee.
Williams walked into Twelve Oaks Hospital in Houston a few hours later. A woman was with him, authorities said, but left.
Williams, Joe, Abel and Fatima are charged only with conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal aliens. More charges involving more suspects are planned, authorities said.