SAN ANTONIO – Eleven people are still fighting to recover from a horrifying botched human smuggling situation after dozens were found dead and many alive with heat-related illnesses in a tractor-trailer on the Southwest Side on Monday evening.
U.S. Homeland Security Investigations is overseeing the details, so the survivors’ future is unclear.
“I think it’s horrific. It says something about the promise of what we have in this country that people are willing to risk that to come here,” said Bill Neely, the executive director of SACRD.org, a comprehensive online directory of human services in the greater San Antonio area.
The nonprofit has been serving people for three years.
“We have about 100 categories of services: health, food, goods, services, legal assistance, housing. If you need to find the PTSD class closest to you, that’s what you can find. We have about 7,500 programs or so that are in the system from more than 2,000 agencies around greater San Antonio,” Neely said.
At a press conference on Tuesday, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg mentioned SACRD several times when answering questions about the migrants.
“On SACRD, you can find refugee services and migrant aid organizations that can help try to cut through some of the red tape of that legal process. Migrants will find a lot of the systems with finding assistance with groceries, finding people that are from their community that they can help them form support groups,” Neely said.
Neely knows it’s still unknown whether or not the migrants will remain in San Antonio for an extended period, but he wants them and their caseworkers to know that if they do, there’s help available.
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