Among 53 migrants discovered dead or dying after traveling in a hot tractor-trailer was a longtime Arkansas resident trying to get home to his family, the man's widow said.
Authorities found 55-year-old Juan Valeriano Domitilo in San Antonio on June 27 in what one Homeland Security official called the deadliest smuggling tragedy of its type.
Authorities counted a total of 64 migrants at the scene suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, as stated in a Homeland Security affidavit filed in the criminal case against the man accused of driving the rig.
The dead include four teenagers 16 years of age or younger among those whose identities had been released by Wednesday. A majority of the identified dead have been Mexican nationals, including Valeriano Domitilo.
"I told him that it would be very difficult for him to cross the border," his wife, Maria Gomez Salgado, said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Her husband, a construction worker, had traveled to Mexico in September to visit relatives, she said. But the couple had built a life in southwest Arkansas.
Juan arrived 21 years ago, and she followed two years later, Gomez Salgado said.
They lived about 20 minutes from De Queen in the small town of Wickes, a part of the state with a large Hispanic population. In Sevier County, home to De Queen, Hispanics make up about one-third of the county's population, according to the Central Arkansas Library Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Juan played music on the keyboard and guitar, Gomez Salgado said. The photo of Juan selected by the family for his obituary shows him behind a keyboard, wearing a suit and tie and just a hint of a smile.
He was a hard worker and also a jokester, she said.
"Everyone loved him," Gomez Salgado said, speaking Spanish during the interview.
The couple raised three children and have four grandchildren, she said.
"He wanted to return to the United States to be with us," Gomez Salgado said.
In Mexico, "there is a lot of poverty, a lot of crime," she said. Her husband told her that he had been robbed of his money and cellphone on his way home from work.
"We endanger ourselves when we come here," Gomez Salgado said. But "there's the hope of a better life in the United States," she added.
Gomez Salgado reached out to a Dallas-area nonprofit, Morelenses in Texas Tepalcingo Unido, after learning of her husband's death.
The group helps those from the Mexican state of Morelos, and her husband was born in Jojutla in Morelos, Gomez Salgado said.
Lorena Cortes Dominguez, president of the nonprofit group, recalled Gomez Salgado as being "devastated" when calling for help about her huband's death.
The nonprofit established an online fundraising effort -- www.gofundme.com/f/colecta-para-morelense-juan-valeriano-domitilo -- to assist with funeral expenses for Valeriano Domitilo, including transport of his body back to Arkansas.
The couple attended church at St. Barbara Catholic Church in De Queen, where a funeral service is scheduled for Saturday, with burial in Polk County to follow.
"It's a tragic event, and it definitely is the result of bad decisions of many people, probably including Juan," Cortes Dominguez said. "However, it's a tragedy. It's an event that should not have happened."
The suspected driver of the rig, Homero Zamorano Jr., has been charged with transporting the migrants resulting in their death. If found guilty, the maximum penalty for Zamorano is life in prison or death.
On the day the tractor-trailer was found, a San Antonio fire official described the rig as a "refrigerated tractor-trailer" but one without a visibly working air conditioning unit.
Three other arrests have also been described by the U.S. Department of Justice as having some connection to the deadly smuggling.
"My community is taking this tragedy very personally, because it's one of our own, from the state of Morelos," Cortes Dominguez said. "For most us, it's something that could have happened to us."
Cortes Dominguez added: "There is no mechanism to stop illegal immigration. It is a reality. We only have -- what's left for us is just grief."
Gomez Salgado said that she had spoken with her husband when he was in Mexico about a failed border crossing attempt, and that he had said Border Patrol agents took away his Mexican passport, his diabetic medication and other belongings.
The Border Patrol also took away the identification of others he was with, Gomez Salgado recalled her husband saying.
She said he called her on Sunday, June 26, from Nuevo Laredo to say that he planned another attempt either that day or Monday.
He had insisted on making the journey when they talked, she said.
"He told me, 'I want to be with you. I don't want to leave you, I want to be back again with my children and grandchildren,'" Gomez Salgado said. "I told him that it would be OK, that he would make it OK. I didn't know what would happen, obviously."
Upon hearing about the migrants found dead in the trailer, Gomez Salgado said she at first didn't think her husband would have been on board.
Her phone calls to him didn't go through, but that wasn't necessarily unusual. He had told her that as part of the crossing, handlers often took away the phones of those making the journey.
She became worried, however, after learning that the migrants were found without identification, and she began making inquiries to the Mexican consulate and supplying photos to them to try to determine whether her husband had been in the trailer.
With family members, she went to the Mexican consul in Little Rock to provide more documentation. She said she got the call on Friday, July 1, from Mexican officials that her husband was among the dead.
"My family is suffering," Gomez Salgado said.
She said the community is providing her family with support, and that she was glad for the help from the Texas-based nonprofit group.
In talking with the organization about funeral expenses, Gomez Salgado said she knew that she wanted her husband's body back in Arkansas.
"Right away, I said I wanted my husband brought here, because he wanted to get back here with us."