11 Immigrants Trapped In British Truck Survived On Expensive Belgian Chocolate

Eleven immigrants were found trapped in the back of a box truck Saturday at a British rest stop, surviving on the truck’s cargo of Belgian chocolate according to the Telegraph.

The immigrants consisted of 10 Iraqis including three children, and one Afghan. The truck was stopped and people at a nearby cafe heard screaming and banging coming from the back of the truck.

Police were called to the scene, but the locks were glued shut and required assistance from the Fire Department. The incident happened in Warminster, England, which is 105 miles east of London.

The truck had arrived in England from Europe carrying both the migrants and “very expensive Belgian chocolate,” according to Dave Thomas, owner of the Willoughby Hedge, the rest stop cafe.

"I was in the cafe on site with three drivers when someone came in and said that there was [loud] banging on the side of one of the [trucks]," said Thomas to the Telegraph. “A couple of the drivers come in every Saturday just after lunch coming back from the continent and so once we were told of the banging, they went straight away to the back of the [truck] to try and open the doors, but to no avail.”

The people in the back of the truck were detained on suspicion of illegally entering the United Kingdom.

Thomas said there have been similar incidents.

“We all knew straight away what the banging and shouting was. It has happened here twice before in the past 15 years I believe,” said Thomas. “Police were soon there as were the fire brigade, but then they had to wait for a special disc cutter to get the padlocks off. It seems that there was one who could speak English and the police learned of the total numbers on board, and organized three ambulances who soon arrived.”

Immigration Enforcement was dispatched to the scene.

“Immigration Enforcement was contacted by Wiltshire [County] Police on Dec. 2 after police officers attended an incident involving ten Iraqi nationals, including six minors and one Afghan national at Willoughby Hedge on the [highway] A303. Where someone has no right to remain in the UK, we will take action to remove them,” said Immigration Enforcement in a statement.

A similar situation played out in Texas in July, with a much more tragic ending, when 10 undocumented immigrants died in the back of an overheated delivery truck. Twenty other people were hospitalized after the incident. In November, 26 people immigrating to the U.S. illegally were found in a truck at a checkpoint in Falfurrias, Texas. At the same checkpoint in August, 60 undocumented immigrants were found in the back of a refrigerated truck.

Undocumented immigration by truck promoted an initiative by border patrol called “Operation Big Rig,” which began at the end of November. The initiative is meant to increase public awareness about smuggling immigrants in trucks.

“We actually had 45 cases in the fiscal year 2017 that resulted in over 600 rescues,” said Border Patrol Chief Manuel Padilla to KRGV, an ABC News affiliate in Weslaco. “It's truly an awareness campaign, because of what we are seeing the transportation of immigrants in tractor trailers actually an increase in the number of cases.”

The campaign’s slogan is “They're humans, not cargo.”