Sheriff: People getting out of Texas trailer were work crew

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A group of people who were spotted getting in and out of a parked semitrailer in San Antonio were part of a work crew, not a human-smuggling operation, authorities said Friday.

Authorities checked the vehicle after someone alerted a deputy constable to it, just days after 53 migrants died when they were abandoned in a stifling semitrailer in San Antonio.

“Right now it seems as though the public, law enforcement, everybody’s being a little more hypervigilant than usual,” Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said. “That’s fine, I’d rather that, rather than see another tragedy like what happened a couple days ago.”

Salazar said authorities were still conducting interviews but that so far, it appeared the 14 people with the work crew — 12 Cubans and two Nicaraguans — were here legally, but might not have permission to work.

Salazar said the people were working for a California company and had been doing demolition cleanup on some apartments.

Salazar said Homeland Security Investigations was talking to the workers, who did seem be making a livable wage.

“I think it’s a good thing that people are spotting things that two weeks ago, this may not have raised eyebrows,” he said. “Now people know to look and to ask those questions.”