Driver accused in US migrant deaths

Williams said he was afraid when he saw the immigrants' condition

A lorry driver has appeared in a federal Texas court charged in relation to the deaths of 18 illegal immigrants who suffocated inside a trailer.

Tyrone Williams was charged with three counts of smuggling, conspiring to smuggle and concealing at least 60 illegal immigrants. He did not enter a plea.

Prosecutors have said they may seek the death penalty in connection to the case if Mr Williams is found to have caused the deaths intentionally.

"If convicted, the individuals that are responsible for the trafficking of human beings - where an individual dies during that trafficking - are looking at a possible life sentence," Michael Shelby, US attorney for the southern district of Texas, told French news agency AFP.

Delivery payments

The grim discovery of the bodies at a rest stop in Texas was one of the worst cases of people smuggling in the border area in recent years.

Many Latin Americans make the hazardous journey each year

One of the victims is thought to have been only five years old.

Mr Williams, a 30-year-old Jamaican now living in New York City, is said to have told immigration agents that he was offered $2,500 to pick up the immigrants from Harlingen, a rural town near the Mexican border.

He would get another $2,500 to drive them to the city of Houston, it has been reported.

During the journey he stopped to examine a broken light on the lorry. He heard banging and screaming, then opened the truck doors to find many of the immigrants severely ill from dehydration.

Mr Williams went to a shop and bought water for the illicit passengers but then panicked and unhooked the trailer from his lorry before fleeing.

Sweltering heat

Survivors have been speaking of their desperation as they struggled to escape from the back of the lorry where it is believed up to 100 people were crammed.

This lamentable incident shows the need for and importance of achieving safe conditions on the border for migrants and the need for safe, legal and orderly migration

Mexican foreign ministry statement

One person inside the sweltering container, filled with stagnant air, used a mobile phone to make an emergency call, pleading in Spanish for help as people suffocated.

But the call could not be traced.

Police eventually found the trailer at the rest stop near the city of Victoria, about 230 miles (370 kilometres) from the Mexican border early on Wednesday.

The victims - many of them Mexicans but some from Central America - appeared to have died from suffocation and heat exhaustion, US officials said.

The authorities also believe 40 illegal immigrants managed to escape when they tumbled out of the vehicle alive when it was opened.

They are still searching for at least three other people in connection with the smuggling.

Desperation

The Mexican Government has long pressed Washington to make it easier for Mexicans to go to the US legally.

Every year thousands of Latin Americans make the hazardous journey and are often at the mercy of smuggling gangs.

"This lamentable incident shows the need for and importance of achieving safe conditions on the border for migrants and the need for safe, legal and orderly migration," a foreign ministry statement read.

"The Mexican Government reiterates its commitment to fight gangs of immigrant traffickers and those who seek to profit at the expense of undocumented migrants."