Texas tragedy shows the risk immigrants take

The grim discovery of bodies in a sweltering rig in Texas over the weekend illustrates the costly risks immigrants take to evade tougher U.S. border laws.

“This happens more often than we care to imagine,” said Jonathan Ryan, executive director of RAICES San Antonio, which provides legal services to immigrants.

Border security initiatives have been linked to an increase in migrants trying to cross into the U.S. in trailers in the past. In the mid-1990s, an uptick in such cases occurred with two Clinton-era border measures aimed at halting illegal immigration, said Guadalupe Cor- rea-Cabrera, a fellow at the Wilson Center who studies border security.

A similar increase is happening now in the wake of stricter border security by the Trump administration, she said. Now, smugglers increasingly are coordinating with Mexico-based organized crime rings to beef up smuggler operations and tractor-trailers are a common method for transporting immigrants across the border, Correa-Cabrera said.

Ryan said the latest incident also undermines the idea that Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall would stem the flow of illegal immigrants entirely. “This 18-wheeler didn’t roll over the desert or through the Rio Grande. It rolled right through the port of entry, which is the most highly secured and intensely enforced geo-spaces in the world.”