In an under-populated corner of San Antonio, Texas a truck was found abandoned. Inside the unrefrigerated refrigerator trailer attached to it were five-dozen human beings--men, women and children--of whom 50 were dead or dying, apparently from heat-related symptoms:
They were the “victims” of human smuggling, we are told. Although there were arrests, the “smugglers” themselves likely only stayed long enough to make the gruesome discovery and made their escape rather than hang around for the police to show up. The Associated Press noted that
Big rigs emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid a surge in U.S. border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, which were then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings. Before that, people paid small fees to mom-and-pop operators to get them across a largely unguarded border. As crossing became exponentially more difficult after the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., migrants were led through more perilous terrain and paid thousands of dollars more.
The AP also observed that xenophobic immigration paranoia specifically against Hispanic migrants and asylum seekers is apparent in recent abuses of pandemic era rules: “Migrants — largely from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — have been expelled more than 2 million times under a pandemic-era rule in effect since March 2020 that denies them a chance to seek asylum but encourages repeat attempts because there are no legal consequences for getting caught.” The AP notes that migrants from other countries are less likely to be sent back to their own countries due to “cost” and strained diplomatic relations.
Now, I have already spoken many times about the culpability of the U.S. in the violence that these people are trying to escape, particularly in regard to drugs, guns and gangs in Mexico and Central America:
https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-war-next-door-that-most-americans.html
And how it was racist, xenophobic paranoia that created the “border crisis” in the first place:
https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-border-crisis-was-manufactured-in.html
And how willfully blind Americans are to the need for migrant labor:
https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/2022/05/who-needs-guest-workers-on-farm-when.html
But while some, like San Antonio mayor Ron Nirenberg, have decried this “horrific human tragedy” and pointed out that the “plight of migrants seeking refuge is always a humanitarian crisis, but tonight we are dealing with a horrific human tragedy, so I would urge you all to think compassionately."
Of course you can’t expect the far-right in this country to think "compassionately" when they hypocritically blame the Biden administration’s policies. They might actually be right, but the anti-immigrant policies of Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller were much worse, particularly in the moral sense. In fact Miller had the audacity to blame the Biden administration for allowing “wicked and evil” smugglers to "take advantage" of border enforcement that “rewards” this activity, while Texas Go. Greg Abbott made the ludicrous claim that “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”
Yeah, that is what they call the former vice president of the “Deporter-in-Chief,” Barack Obama. In a statement in response, the Biden administration retorted that these smuggling operations would not be happening if the border was not “shut tight.” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council attacked the deadly immigration policies of the Biden administration that were in response to political pressure from the far-right, tweeting that “With the border shut as tightly as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have been pushed into more and more dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is a way up.”
Who is really the “wicked and evil” here? The neo-Nazi Miller and his ilk, for certain. Everyone who ignores the reality of the “integration” of U.S. polices, its gun and drug culture, and the “deporting” of U.S.-bred gangs, and the unfilled need for migrant labor, particularly in regard to farm labor to feed racist Americans’ faces. The result is that tens of thousands of innocent victims are being murdered in Mexico and Central America, and for many, the deadly trek to the U.S. is worth the risk. The CBP put the number of migrant deaths at 557 for the year ending September 2021; is that a lot? You tell me. Do you care? Of course not. Why should you when you have already forgotten the last mass shooting?
But the U.S. doesn’t want to take responsibility for any of the results from its hypocritical immigration policies; it won’t even try to “reform” its current seasonal or temporary work visa program which deliberately undercuts the need for such labor because of racist paranoia. In a country full of nationalistic narcissists, Americans choose to put the blame on the “others,” leaving out themselves and the country’s policy makers. We have been told that the Biden administration has a “program” in which they are “investigating” the reasons for migration, but we already know what those are, don’t we—or not, if one chooses to be ignorant of reality.
An EU Parliament member from Ireland, Mick Wallace—who we may or may not agree with when he rails against the “hypocrisy” of the U.S. leveling sanctions against Russia when the West is guilty of doing the same things—appeared in a mostly empty chamber…
…to declare that “Some people have said in here how dare we talk about the U.S. Well, we talk about everybody else. Is the U.S. a functioning democracy? Well, let’s have a look at it. It costs 2 billion to become president. They have 25 percent of the total prisoners in the world. They spend over $800 billion a year on arms, which is most of the world put together (although to be “fair,” a large chunk of that is on elevated personnel costs). They’ve been at war for 250 years, but they can’t afford universal health care. They can’t afford a $1.7 trillion debt forgiveness for students, they can’t afford a program for the 17 million children that go to bed hungry. Is this a functioning democracy? Americans can’t even spell ‘democracy.’”
And we can’t expect the U.S. to have a moral asylum policy that doesn’t result in 50 human beings dying in a truck trailer.
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