Immigration advocates on the horrors faced by migrants hoping to cross U.S. border

Immigration advocates are blaming “unscrupulous coyotes” taking advantage of a broken immigration system for the deaths of 51 migrants found inside an 18-wheeler in San Antonio, Texas, as well as the Texas government for exploiting immigrants for political gain.

“We are in a war zone here,” said David Cruz, national communications director for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), commenting on Monday’s horrific discovery of people from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras who had left everything behind to cross the border to seek safety and refuge in the U.S.

Authorities say that the victims were abandoned in the back of a tractor-trailer in the sweltering heat with no water or air-conditioning, in one of the worst incidents of migrant deaths on the U.S. southern border. More than a dozen people, including four children, were taken to the hospital.

Cruz, who grew up in San Antonio and has been fighting for civil rights for over four decades, charged Gov. Greg Abbott has turned the plight of immigrants trying to cross the U.S. border for a better life into a political fight, leading to “terrible, torturous deaths” that will likely keep happening.

“What happened yesterday was bound to happen and will continue to happen, as long as the governor in the state declares war on anyone migrating north to find work,” Cruz told the Daily News, referring to Operation Lone Star, a controversial initiative implemented by the Abbott administration last year that increased the presence of National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers along the Texas-Mexico border.

Monday’s victims were “simple working men and women and their children who find themselves in a pipeline that’s deadly” and who would risk everything to try a better life north of the border, he noted. “Our people would come through sewer pipes if they have to — to survive — because that’s what they have to do,” Cruz said.

The Washington, D.C.-based LULAC is the country’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights group that was founded 93 years ago.

According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 650 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year, the highest number since 2014 when the agency, which is part of the United Nations, began tracking the data.

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The smuggling of migrants under dangerous conditions is not a new phenomenon, but it has been exacerbated by policies enacted by the Trump administration, which “closed the doors to legal — not illegal — immigration,” according to Lydia Guzman, the director of advocacy and civic engagement for Chicanos Por La Causa, a Phoenix, Ariz.-based nonprofit.

That includes the Muslim ban, the rejection of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the implementation of Title 42, which allows the federal government to turn away asylum seekers, she said.

Guzman, who also serves as LULAC’s chair of the National Immigration Committee, added that the abysmal failure of the nation’s immigration system allows “coyotes” to “prey on the hopes of these poor migrants.” What happened to “those poor souls who lost their lives in yesterday’s tragedy [was that] they fell victim to unscrupulous couriers,” she said.

The going rate for an individual who decides to go on the dangerous, often deadly, journey could be between $7,000 and $10,000, according to Cruz, and the money has to be handed over upfront.

“There are cartels now controlling certain routes going north and certain types of smuggling operation options,” he said. As soon as a migrant is able to get on the U.S. side, they are placed in any type of vehicle that the cartels can find.

Today, with more and more troopers between San Antonio and the border, smugglers have to “pack them in deeper in these tractor-trailers, and then they put merchandise on the other side,” Cruz said. “It’s like traveling in a torture chamber for 2½ or three hours. And in this case, the AC unit wasn’t working, and they had no water.”

To the smugglers, immigrants are just like “paid cargo,” said Guzman. “They don’t have to collect any money upon delivery, because they’ve already collected upfront. And sadly, what’s happening is they just don’t care about human life. To them, this is cargo, and that’s why they were treated as such.”