A man in Texas named Zachary Taylor Blood has admitted that he was trying to smuggle two people into the United States in a coffin, as per the US Department of Justice’s Southern District of Texas.
The justice department revealed on Wednesday (January 26) that the 33-years-old used coffin draped with an American flag, just like those carry soldiers killed in combat.
It has also been understood that those two men in the coffin were Mexican nationals, who admitted to having crossed the Rio Grande river into the US and paying a man to take them to the Texas city of San Antonio.
The suspect was caught when in October he drove a van “modified to transport caskets” to a checkpoint near the US-Mexico border in Texas, federal prosecutor Jennifer Lowery’s office said in a statement.
When asked by agents what he was transporting, Blood responded “dead guy, Navy guy,” according to the statement. “However, the coffin was in poor condition and the American flag was taped to the top with packing tape,” the Justice Department said.
As per the reports, Blood faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
According to official statistics, the United States recorded nearly two million migrant apprehensions for illegal entry into the country along its southern border with Mexico in 2021.
Migrant arrivals to the United States declined markedly during the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic but began to pick up later in 2020, before surging since President Joe Biden took office in January last year.
(With inputs from agencies)
