ICE has opened a human-smuggling investigation after an overpacked SUV crashed in California near the Mexican border, killing 13

• At least 13 people were killed in a collision involving a packed SUV in Southern California on Tuesday.
• ICE said late Tuesday that the crash had prompted a human-smuggling investigation.
• Mexico said that 10 of the 13 victims were Mexican nationals.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is investigating whether human smuggling played a role in a crash in Southern California on Tuesday that left at least 13 people dead, The Associated Press reported.

Authorities told the AP that the crash occurred at about 6:15 a.m. local time outside the town of Holtville, about 10 miles north of the Mexican border.

A gravel truck going north T-boned a 1997 Ford Expedition that was pulling onto the highway, authorities said. The AP report said it wasn't clear whether the SUV had run a stop sign or what speed the tractor-trailer had been going.

The SUV was designed to fit eight people but was carrying a total of 25, the AP reported.

The driver of the SUV, identified as a 22-year-old man from Mexicali, Mexico, and 12 others in the SUV died, while the driver of the tractor-trailer and several passengers in the SUV were injured, officials told the AP.

The driver of the tractor-trailer was identified as Joe Beltran, 68, of nearby El Centro, California, according to KGTV, an ABC affiliate in San Diego.

The nationalities of the dead and injured and the number of people in the SUV appeared to be of significance to ICE.

The Mexican government said in a statement on Tuesday that 10 of the 13 people who died were Mexican nationals. The nationalities of the three other victims were unclear, according to the AP. Two people who were airlifted to San Diego hospitals were from Guatemala, NBC 7 San Diego reported.

Omar Watson, the chief of the California Highway Patrol's border division, told the AP that all of the SUV's back seats had been taken out, with only the driver's seat and the front passenger seat left.

ICE said late Tuesday that its Homeland Security Investigations unit had "initiated a human smuggling investigation" into the crash but that "no further details are available at this time," the AP reported.

The AP reported that the crash happened in California's Imperial Valley agricultural region at the height of the harvest season.

The region produces lettuce, onions, broccoli, and other winter vegetables. Holtville even calls itself the carrot capital of the world, according to the AP.

The AP reported that the area became a major route for illegal border crossings in the late 1990s amid a crackdown to the east in San Diego.

Today, many foreign agricultural workers commute into the US daily, taking buses and SUVs that leave before dawn from Calexico, Mexico, the AP said.