daniel chigunweSAN ANTONIO. – At least 46 people believed to be migrants were found dead in and around an abandoned truck in San Antonio, Texas on Monday night, said local officials.
According to US media reports, this “horrific human tragedy,” as the city’s mayor claimed, is the deadliest smuggling incident in the country in recent years.
Migrants have been a vital part of the US since its founding. The country is known as a “melting pot,” but for some, it seems that the heaven for migrants has become a hell.
A professor at the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, who requested anonymity, said that the inhumane abuses of migrants, especially the illegal ones, are one of the significant stains on Washington’s human rights record.
“Many undocumented immigrants become illegal workers after they arrive in the US. To some extent, they are treated like modern-day slaves by different interest groups in the country,” the expert said.
Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blamed trafficking and “a lack of control” at the border – the worst case of migrant deaths due to smuggling in the US.
Nearly two dozen Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans were among the dead.
Those found alive, including four children, were taken to hospital.
The survivors were “hot to the touch” and suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion.
For years, people from developing countries were brought to the US under false pretences or simply through human trafficking. For these people, becoming forced labour would be their fate in the country.
An indictment of several immigrant smugglers in 2021 revealed that their victims were forced to work as day labourers on the farm, living in dirty, overcrowded conditions without regular access to food and water.
Moreover, non-white migrants are more vulnerable to police brutality than other groups in the US. In April 2022, for example, a white police officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, shot and killed Patrick Lyoya, a black immigrant from Congo who had fled to the US for asylum.
Lyoya’s death sparked outrage in the US. Lyoya was a documented migrant. If a legal immigrant is treated this way, it is hard to believe the fate of those without documents. – Global Times
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