Death on the Border: Many Of The Immigrants Who Died In The Trailer Of A Big Rig In Texas Were Trying To Make Money To Send Home To Their Impoverished Families
A few weeks ago, San Antonio, Texas was the place of a scores of migrant deaths. Adolfo Flores for BuzzFeed News follows up and reports that “[a]s the names of the 53 immigrants who died in a tractor-trailer . . . in Texas have slowly been released, so has a clearer picture of their stories and what led to what appears to be the deadliest human smuggling incident in US history.”
All but one of the 53 immigrants who died in a sweltering tractor-trailer have been identified. According to Flores, “most were Mexican men who were hoping to make more money in the US to support their families.”
Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, said that, “[d]espite the horrors the immigrants in this incident endured, the deaths are unlikely to deter the vast majority of people who want to make the trek to the US border . . . . There’s a difference between knowing the dangers that could befall someone on their journey to the US and thinking it could happen to you, Leutert said.
“Maybe some people out there will see this case and think, No, I don’t want to do that, or a parent will say no,” Leutert said. “For the majority of people, they are not viewing their migration as a fully voluntary decision but rather one they need to take whether due to violence, hunger, or the inability to live a prosperous and dignified life within their own community.”
KJ