Houston ? Mateo Salgado Perez bought his way onto a sweltering trailer with hopes of being reunited with his wife, Emilia, and their seven children in Houston.

He never made it back to them.

The 45-year-old restaurant worker was buried Saturday in an emotion-filled funeral service attended by nearly 100 people, 10 days after he died in a trailer that was smuggling dozens of illegal immigrants into the Unites States.

“We buried him in Houston because all his family is here,” said his brother, Adrian Salgado. “This is a very difficult day. He tried to come back because he wanted to see his family.”

Salgado Perez called Houston home for 20 years but was recently deported back to Mexico after a drunken-driving conviction. Family members say he was innocent of the charge.

Emilia Salgado, center, with three of her seven children, wipes tears from her eyes at the funeral of her husband, Mateo Salgado. Salgado was one of 19 immigrants who died last week in the back of an unventilated trailer.

He was one of 19 immigrants who died in the trailer, in what officials are calling the country’s deadliest smuggling accident.

His four sisters and two brothers, as well as his wife and children and a large group of other relatives, attended a short graveside service conducted in Spanish at a West Houston cemetery. After the service, people lined up and sprinkled dirt on his silver casket while immediate family members placed red and yellow roses on top of it.

Authorities say the trailer that Salgado Perez rode in was packed with about 70 immigrants. It was abandoned early in the morning of May 14 at a truck stop near Victoria.