Reporter | Liu Zixiang
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Like the United Kingdom more than 2 years ago, the United States broke out a horrific truck immigration massacre, but this time the number of people killed is even higher.
A van stopped near a car recycling yard outside the southern Texas city of San Antonio due to mechanical failure on June 27. At about 5:45 p.m., Roberto Gentro, an employee at a nearby trucking company, was about to finish his day and prepare to leave work. At this time, a colleague ran in and shouted to call the police.
Quintero walked out the door and saw a van parked outside the company door. Next to the car, a girl of about 10 years old was sitting on the ground screaming in horror. Quintero walked over, and the little girl clutched his arm deadly, crying in Spanish, "Save me, save me."
Quintero didn't know where the little girl was coming from, and didn't think to ask for her name for a moment. He noticed a strong smell coming from the van carriage with its doors open, and as he walked over, he saw a pile of corpses huddled in the compartment. A little farther away from the pile of corpses, a man seemed unable to breathe, coughing and struggling to get up.
Soon after, San Antonio police arrived, and they found 64 people in the carriage. The death toll has now risen to 53, caused by extreme heat. The temperature reached a maximum of 39.4 degrees Celsius that day, and there was no cooling equipment in the van.
These people came from multiple countries, of whom 27 were Mexicans, 14 Hondurans, 7 Guatemalans and 2 Salvadorans, and the nationalities of some remain unclear.
Vasquez, 31, lives in a remote mountainous area in southern Mexico with only one phone to keep in touch with the outside world. His uncle, Aquilino Guzman, last met him a few weeks ago. He had just left the Mexican army, but he had not revealed to his uncle any plans to leave his hometown.
On June 27, the dying Vasquez was found in a van, severely dehydrated. He is currently being treated at a hospital in San Antonio.
Andino, 22, and Redondo, 19, are brothers. On June 4, Andino, with his wife Paz, and his brother left a small town in northwestern Honduras with his brother and got into a van bound for the United States.
Andino is about to finish his degree in marketing, and his wife, Paz, has a degree in economics, but the two can't get a job in Honduras, they have to find a better life.
On the morning of June 25, her mother, Karen, found that her two sons could not be contacted. Until the 27th, the police found the bodies of their son and daughter-in-law in the wagon.
Vasquez of Mexico and the Honduran brothers both went through a similar procedure before boarding the van. After paying $8,000 to $10,000, they got a ticket to go north. A small group of people trekked across the river and were then taken to a hidden hideout. When there are enough people, a car, van or a big truck will come and carry them across the U.S.-Mexico border. They are also sprayed with a substance with a pungent odor that can evade detection by police dogs.
After a successful transit, they will also change to other means of transportation and continue to the land of their dreams such as Los Angeles, Houston or Phoenix.
But not everyone is so lucky. Some died of dehydration in their carriages, while others died in Mexico before they crossed the border.
In fact, such tragedies are not uncommon in recent years. In December 2021, a semi-trailer overturned on a highway in southern Mexico, killing more than 50 migrants. In 2018, a trailer containing more than 50 illegal immigrants was intercepted in San Antonio, but fortunately no one was killed. In 2017, 10 migrants were trapped inside a truck at a Walmart supermarket in San Antonio and died. In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.
In the wake of the recent tragedy, the public questioned why such vans, laden with illegal immigrants, could cross border checkpoints.
Details provided by Francisco Garduño Yáñez, director general of Mexico's National Immigration Agency, showed that around 3 p.m. that day, the deck car with a Texas license plate successfully passed through a federal checkpoint in Encina, the state, before heading north along Interstate 35. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigation declined to comment.
Jerry Robbint, a former Department of Homeland Security agent who has overseen border checks in San Antonio, has seen this situation a lot. He said many drivers did not undergo a thorough inspection when crossing the border.
One of the reasons is that the relevant laws restrict police searches. According to the law, the Cantonal Police do not have the authority to scrutinize vehicles in transit, and the power to inspect the presence of illegal persons and contraband rests with the Federal Police. However, the Federal Police are also restricted in their searches, and they can only carry out such inspections if there is a good reason for doing so. Most of the time they are simply interrogated and visually inspected, and only highly suspicious vehicles are taken off the road for a second inspection.
Another reason is the high flow of traffic in transit. The route from Laredo, Mexico, to San Antonio, USA, is crossed by about 20,000 trucks a day. According to Mexican customs data, between 6,000 and 6,800 trucks travel north every day through the ports of New Laredo and Laredo, Texas. And the Border Patrol doesn't have enough manpower and capacity to inspect every vehicle.
Some argue that U.S. immigration policies fuel the problem. Melnick, the U.S. Immigration Council's director of policy, wrote on Twitter that under strict immigration policies, the southern border was closed and people were pushed onto increasingly dangerous routes.
Increasingly stringent border enforcement is prompting more migrants to take risks. Before 1990, people could cross the nearly unguarded U.S.-Mexico border for a small fee. After the early 1990s, as U.S. enforcement increased along the borders of San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, large trucks became a popular form of smuggling.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, crossing the border became more difficult. Latin American immigrants who want to go to the United States have to enter from more dangerous terrain and pay thousands of dollars at the same time.
The COVID-19 pandemic has tightened U.S. border policy even more. The Trump administration introduced the "Section 42 Border Clause," which authorizes border enforcement to quickly deport migrants across the border without any judicial process, and has so far deported more than 2 million people.
The frequency with which the United States intercepts migrants at the southern border has reached a 20-year high. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nearly 240,000 migrants were intercepted in May, a third more than a year ago. 25 percent of them are "old faces" who have tried to cross the border more than once.
After Democrats took office, the Biden administration sought to end the "42-clause border" policy. However, in May, the Federal Court of Louisiana blocked the move.
Regarding immigration policy, the two parties in the United States have always thrown the pot at each other. Albert, a Republican governor of Texas, singled out Biden for ignoring the crisis and fueling the problem. He said that since Biden took office, he has eliminated Border Patrol funding, resulting in insufficient funding.
In order to guard the border gates, Abbott has ordered Texas to step up inspections, set up highway checkpoints, and investigate trucks traveling across the state.
The Democratic Party believes that the criminal groups on the US-Mexico border are the focus of the crackdown. On Tuesday, Biden called the tragic event "shocking and heartbreaking" in a statement. He has said he wants to crack down on billions of dollars in smuggling crime industries that have fueled record numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since he took office.
In the eyes of others, "it's all about the money". Urbano Martinez, sheriff of Brooks County, Texas, said mexican criminal gangs have become involved in human smuggling in recent years, turning the illegal movement of people across borders into a major business. At the same time, stricter U.S. border enforcement is forcing smugglers to take more dangerous routes into the U.S., who don't care about the safety of stowaways and put them at risk.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said 557 people had died at the southwest border in the 12 months to Sept. 30, 2021, more than double the previous figure of 247 and the highest level since 1998. Most of them died from high temperatures.
Archbishop Syler of San Antonio said that overall immigration reform is needed to solve the immigration crisis in the United States, and thus to solve the problem of smuggling and human trafficking. However, reform is so complex. Shiller said that while there is no better solution for himself, deterrence policies such as simply and crudely deporting migrants to Mexico in recent years are not the answer. In his view, it is crucial to ensure that immigrants can enter the United States in a variety of ways to apply for asylum.
Under the strict policy, many immigrants are unable to enter the asylum application process, and they try their best to enter the United States many times. At the same time, migrants who have been forcibly driven to Mexico, unable to be properly resettled and without dignity, have spawned a smuggling and human trafficking business. When migrants are transported as "goods," one tragedy after another is almost predictable.