Migrant deaths reflect cruel, chaotic system
Of all the horrific details that have emerged about the deaths of at least 51 people found in and near a tractortrailer in San Antonio on Monday, one speaks most clearly to the cruelty and dehumanization that confronts too many desperate newcomers to our country:
They had been covered in steak seasoning.
The tactic was meant to mask the very human reality of the migrants’ presence inside a truck that authorities found with no functioning air conditioning or water.
Some 100 children and adults had started on the journey, some reportedly coming from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
When responders found the 16 people who were rushed to the hospital with heat-related illnesses, they were warm to the touch.
It’s being called the deadliest such tragedy on American soil and it stands as an absolute stain and indictment on our ability to create legitimate pathways to migration, to ensure the necessary infrastructure to give quality consideration and representation to those who seek refuge or opportunity here.
The suffering of the migrants left to suffocate in an 18-wheeled grave seems unimaginable, and yet, their circumstances are painfully familiar.
Three people have been arrested so far. In truth, many more are culpable for the broader failure to reform a broken immigration system or to respond humanely to the crisis on the ground.
Gov. Greg Abbott tried to blame so-called “open borders,” a vague and misleading term that rings especially hollow when you consider that Monday’s victims are testament to the lengths some people go to come here.
The border is not open, nor should it be. If it were, why would migrants pay their life savings to board a dark, dank cargo container that could easily become a death trap?
Who were these individuals? What drove them to such desperate measures? Whom did they turn to in their final moments?
They were humans abandoned multiple times over. Families and communities were devastated in the wake.
They were treated little better than meat — by their smugglers and by the politicians who try to profit off their demise.
It gives new meaning, new horror, to the term “red meat,” the partisan rhetoric or politically advantageous stunts — such as Abbott’s costly Operation Lone Star — whose sole purpose seems to be feeding a ravenous voter base.
No, America didn’t ask the migrants to board that truck.
But we are the country that promises harbor and slams the door.
We’re the country that advertises the American dream and delivers more often a rude awakening.
We’re the country that beckons migrant labor to tend our fields, bus our tables, replace our tar-black roofs in 100-degree heat — knowing full well that only applicants willing to run a deadly gauntlet across the border need apply.
Why are the deaths of 51 people on our own American soil quickly exploited as campaign kindling while the systemic problems that enabled this tragedy are shrugged off as someone else’s problem?
Our nation bears responsibility. We must commit to a solution.