Seven migrants die of heat inside Union Pacific train car in Texas

A sealed Union Pacific railcar on a South Texas freight line became a death trap in the heat, killing migrants who were trying to move north through one of the most heavily trafficked stretches of the Texas-Mexico border. Authorities said the bodies were discovered in and around rail corridors linking Del Rio and Laredo, where smugglers have long used remote routes, freight lines and other hard-to-monitor paths to evade enforcement.

A Union Pacific employee found six bodies on Sunday, May 10, 2026, inside a shipping container or boxcar at the company’s rail yard in Laredo, near mile marker 13 of Interstate 35 and close to 12100 Jim Young Way. First responders arrived shortly afterward. Local officials said the victims did not appear to be alive when they were found, and investigators later said the case was being treated as a potential human smuggling event.

The Webb County medical examiner, Corinne Stern, said autopsies indicated hyperthermia, or heat stroke, was likely the cause of death. Stern completed an autopsy on a 29-year-old Mexican woman and ruled the death accidental. She estimated it may have taken up to eight hours for the victims to succumb, a grim measure of how quickly a closed freight container can become deadly in Texas heat, especially when people are packed inside without ventilation or water.

By May 12, authorities had identified five of the six people found in the railcar as citizens of Mexico and Honduras, including a 14-year-old boy. The medical examiner’s office contacted the Mexican consulate after identifying the woman, and fingerprints shared with U.S. Border Patrol through the Missing Alien Program helped confirm identities and nationalities. Authorities also said one of the victims was a Mexican woman who alerted a relative to the extreme heat inside the railcar before she died.

The investigation widened after a seventh body was found near railroad tracks on San Antonio’s Southwest Side on Monday, May 11, and was believed to be connected to the same group. Homeland Security Investigations said it was working the case with the Laredo Police Department and Texas Rangers. The deaths drew immediate comparison to the 53 migrants who died in a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio in 2022, another case that showed how sealed vehicles and punishing heat can turn migration routes into mass-casualty events.