Texas car crash – live: Video captures moments before Brownsville ...

Brownsville has seen a surge in the number of Venezuelan migrants arriving over the last two weeks for unclear reasons, local authorities said in light of yesterday’s incident.

On Thursday, 4,000 of about 6,000 migrants in Border Patrol custody in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley were Venezuelan.

The surge prompted Brownsville commissioners to indefinitely extend a declaration of emergency during a special meeting held last week, as local, state and federal resources coordinated enforcement and humanitarian response.

“We don’t want them wandering around outside,” Pedro Cardenas, a city commissioner, said in the wake of Sunday’s deadly crash. “So, we’re trying to make sure they’re as comfortable as they can be so they don’t have to go out and look for anywhere else.”

Brownsville has long been an epicentre for migration across the US-Mexico border and it has become a key location of interest for next week’s end to pandemic-era border restrictions known as Title 42. The Ozanam shelter is the only overnight shelter in the city and manages the release of thousands of migrants from federal custody.

About 2,500 migrants have crossed through the Rio Grande river daily into Brownsville in the past few days, Mr Cardenas said.

He added that Border Patrol is aware of the city’s capacity of 1,000 at their processing area near the crossing point and a downtown building where city employees and volunteers guide migrants on how to purchase bus or plane tickets to their final destinations. The city is considering expanding those services to accommodate needs in the coming days, Mr Cardenas said.

While 80 per cent of people released from federal custody typically leave the same day, the city’s emergency management official said, a bottleneck has formed over the past few days.

“Most of the people coming across don’t want to stay in Brownsville, but we don’t have enough buses for them to buy their ticket to leave,” Mr Cardenas said. “Some are waiting for family members.”

The Ozanam shelter itself can hold 250 people.

“In the last two months, we’ve been getting 250 to 380 a day,” its director Victor Maldonado said.

While the shelter offers migrants transportation during the week, they also use the city’s public transportation.

Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a statement shared on Sunday afternoon: “I hope that today serves as a wake up call, and that state officials will begin investing in a humanitarian response that might have helped the people who were impacted by this morning’s tragedy.”

US representative Vicente Gonzalez said that local officials are in communication with the federal government about the crash.

“We are all extremely sad and heartbroken to have such a tragedy in our neighbourhood,” he said.

The aforementioned Bishop Flores said Mass at the Ozanam migrant shelter last night for the victims of yesterday’s horrific road smash.

“Many first responders attended the Mass,” he states. “Pray for them also, for the burden they carry is great.”

As we await further updates on this story, here’s a look back at my colleague Graeme Massie’s orginal report on the tragedy.

While local police have insisted so far that they have yet to establish whether the driver’s actions were intentional or accidental, comments made by one man at the scene cast doubt on that position.

Luis Herrera, 33, who was hit by the SUV on Sunday and suffered a broken arm in the incident, claimed the driver was taunting the migrants before the crash took place.

“He crossed the street and he hit the gas and he drove by my legs, and hurt my arm. The others, he killed almost all of them,” The Washington Post quotes him as saying.

The Post also reports that Mr Herrera recalls the driver yelling: “You’re invading my property!”

The suspect accused of ramming his car into a crowd in Brownsville was taken to the hospital for injuries sustained when the car rolled over, police have said, adding that he was “being very uncooperative at the hospital”.

“But he will be transported to our city jail as soon as he gets released,” they added. “Then we’ll fingerprint him and [take a] mug shot, and then we can find his true identity. Police retrieved a blood sample and sent it to a Texas Department of Public Safety lab to test for intoxicants.”

Brownsville investigator Lt Martin Sandoval said there are three possible explanations for the collision: “It could be intoxication; it could be an accident; or it could be intentional. In order for us to find out exactly what happened, we have to eliminate the other two.”

Sister Norma Pimentel, the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, said the Ozanam Center in Brownsville typically houses some migrants overnight and had received no direct threats in connection with the border crisis in recent weeks.

Sister Pimentel said it was “truly unfortunate that this tragic thing happened,” according to NBC.

“It’s something that, with all the attention to the migrants, it must pick up the attention to those who are against them.”

Migrants “don’t deserve to face this tragic reality,” she added.

Bishop Daniel Flores of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville has issued the following pointed statement on Sunday’s tragedy.

“As we await a fuller report from law enforcement authorities, let us stop for a moment to mourn these losses of life and to pray. Pray for the victims, pray for the families and loved ones, and pray for our community,” Bishop Flores said.

“We must resist the corrosive tendency to devalue the lives of immigrants, the poor, and the vulnerable. Let us take extra steps as a local community to care for and protect one another, especially the most vulnerable.”

The city’s mayor has posted this update on Facebook, noting the increased death toll, reporting the lack of information from the driver and promising a police press conference later today.

He also thanks emergency service personnel for their response and expresses his condolences to the shelter staff reeling from the tragedy.

If you’re just joining us, this is what we know so far about Sunday’s shocking incident near a migrant shelter in the Texas border city of Brownsville.

• A grey Range Rover SUV slammed into a crowd of people waiting for a bus outside of a migrant shelter known as the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center in Brownsville at approximately 8.30am on Sunday morning.
• Eight people died in the incident and another nine were hospitalised, the victims largely composed of Venezuelan men said to be returning to downtown Brownsville after spending the night at the shelter.
• The driver, an unnamed Hispanic male, was reportedly detained at the scene by bystanders and is also now in hospital and has been charged with reckless driving. He has been described by police as “very uncooperative”.
• They are seeking to establish whether his actions were accidental or intentional and are working to determine whether he was intoxicated by alcohol or drugs at the time.
• One witness told local media: “We were going to the airport and it happened unexpectedly because a woman in a car passed by and advised us to separate and moments later the killer was coming in the car gesturing and insulting us.”

Be warned, some viewers may find this security camera footage taken at the scene distressing.

CCTV captutes moment vehicle crashes into people outside Texas migrant shelter