Update, 2:55 p.m., Friday, June 5:
A major South Texas highway is now open more than a dozen hours after a law enforcement pursuit of suspected human smugglers ended in a tractor trailer catching fire and the closure of all southbound lanes. Now, two suspected human smugglers have been taken into custody, and some 39 undocumented migrants were rescued from the trailer before it was engulfed by the flames.
The pursuit began when the driver of a semi-truck allegedly fled from a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint located along U.S. 281 just outside of Falfurrias after a K-9 gave a positive alert when the vehicle stopped for an inspection just after 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 4. But rather than proceed to a secondary inspection stall, the driver allegedly drove northward past the Border Patrol checkpoint, then turned back onto the southbound lanes. Agents, along with Texas Department of Public Safety troopers pursued the commercial truck, which refused to stop, even after troopers deployed “a vehicle immobilization device,” Border Patrol said in a Facebook post on Friday…