\n \n \n “. concat(self. i18n. t(‘search. voice. recognition_retry’), “\n
Police investigate a semi-trailer on June 27, 2022 in San Antonio, Texas. Credit – Jordan Vonderhaar—Getty Images
Four men are criminally charged in connection with the failure of the human trafficking attempt that left 53 other people dead in San Antonio in June, but experts and advocates who have studied the death toll among immigrants say it probably wouldn’t lead to similar tragedies if it went down again. The San Antonio event is the result of an uncompromising policy of deterrence at the U. S. -Mexico border, they argue, that fuels harmful human trafficking.
As the U. S. The U. S. uses strict border policies that limit legal pathways to the U. S. In the U. S. , such as preventing asylum applications, the COVID-19 eligibility measure known as Title 42, and limiting pathways to transient smuggler visas, demand and charge for smugglers is increasing, for example. researchers.
The combination of an intransigent border policy between the U. S. The U. S. and Mexico, a harmful geography, the growing number of other people migrating to the northern United States in recent years and their growing vulnerability and desperation, what some experts describe as complicated human trafficking operations that increasingly involve organized criminal groups. While individual perpetrators like those in San Antonio can be held accountable, the underlying points that lead migrants to smugglers have not been addressed. “It only increases the incentives for things like this type of smuggling to happen,” says Doris Meissner, a senior researcher and director of the U. S. Immigration Policy Program. The U. S. Institute for Migration Policy (MPI), a think tank organization.
Despite the danger, some other people in desperate conditions still opt for the facilities of a smuggler to wait in limbo in Mexico for a legal address to the United States, says Jason De Leon, executive director of the Hummingbird Center for Human and Undocumented Rights. Migration Project, two Arizona organizations working together to identify the bodies of migrants found dead in the Arizona desert. professor of anthropology at UCLA and is publishing an e-book on human trafficking from Honduras to the United States and the border with Mexico. “that lately there are tractor-trailers in South Texas that have immigrants at the back crossings because other people are so desperate and smugglers are just looking to find tactics to provide facilities to those customers.
Since the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) began collecting information in 2014, it has documented nearly 3,000 migrant deaths at the U. S. -Mexico border. According to many experts, the real figure is particularly higher. disappearances were recorded at the US-Mexico border, according to IOM, 53% more than in 2020.
Read more: More migrants die crossing the border in South Texas than elsewhere in the United States. This documentary shows the human cost
After tragedies like the one in San Antonio, investigators say U. S. officials are saying they are in san antonio. U. S. citizens want to know how U. S. border policy is going to be used. The U. S. influences migrants’ willingness to turn to smugglers, especially under Title 42. The fitness measure invoked through the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Border officials to immediately deport other people crossing the U. S. -Mexico border, even if they wish to apply for asylum, in the call to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Since the measure began, the border government has carried out more than 2 million deportations. under Title 42 at the U. S. -U. S. borderand Mexico, according to U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). USA
After being deported, many of those other people are encouraged to turn to smugglers, Meissner says. What happened in San Antonio is an “extreme example of what you want better understood about the border,” he says. “We cannot force our way out of this challenge of migratory pressures and migratory flows. “
On June 27, Homero Zamorano Jr. , 45, was arrested after attempting to flee the crime scene near Quintana Road in southwest San Antonio. By the time San Antonio police and immigration officers arrived on the scene, 48 migrants were already dead, some of their bodies “piled up” in the back of the semi-trailer, warm to the touch, according to San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood, who spoke to reporters on June 27. The survivors were taken to nearby hospitals, but five more later died.
Zamorano reportedly transported a total of 64 migrants, mostly from Mexico, some from Guatemala and Honduras, to the back of the semi-trailer without a working air conditioning unit. He is accused of transporting undocumented immigrants resulting in death and faces life in prison. Christian Martinez, 28, with whom Zamorano allegedly communicated the smuggling operation, was also arrested and faces similar charges, and two other men, believed to have ties to the truck used in the contraband, were also arrested and detained without deposit. .
Smugglers do their jobs in all parts of Central America and Mexico, and far beyond the U. S. -Mexico border. The routes smugglers take are accompanied by trips on dangerous terrain to get through Border Patrol agents and U. S. checkpoints. The U. S. department of homeland security in Texas on June 27 would possibly involve hiding migrants in vehicles, according to a 2020 study by the University of Texas at the Strauss Center for Security and International Law in Austin. When crossing Texas with or without smugglers, migrants are at risk of dehydration, drowning, exposure to the elements, traffic injuries and violence, according to the Strauss Center study.
In the week leading up to the June 27 tragedy, the Border Patrol’s Laredo domain apprehended more than 400 undocumented immigrants who had been smuggled into advertising cars as part of six separate smuggling operations, the firm said on its Facebook page, a sighting first posted through Gabriela Sanchez. Cultural anthropologist and director of cash studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “As long as other people don’t have equivalent visas and passports,” he says, “it doesn’t matter how many billions governments spend. This call is fueled by this same lack of ability to move safely, legally.
The smuggling industry is evolving and there are still many unknowns about smuggling operations in Central America, Mexico and the United States. Sanchez says the smugglers are themselves members of migrant communities. “When you’re really going to spend time in those communities. . . they are going to see that it is a crime of the deficient for the deficient,” he said. De León, for his part, argues that smuggling is increasingly controlled and exploited through organized crime – a position that is also exercised through the U. S. federal government. and other migration specialists. (Investigators did not say whether Zamorano, Martinez or the other two men arrested after the June 27 tragedy are connected to organized crime groups. )
Pay a smuggler or organized criminal teams that Mexican territory can charge between $2,000 and $7,000, according to De León. Crossing the U. S. -Mexico border will charge between $3,000 and $5,000 more. every facet of the process,” says De León. It doesn’t matter if you move little by little or with other smugglers, or without a smuggler, throughout Mexico. Either way, you still have to interact with crime in terms of paying personal taxes to get through other regions.
In the wake of the San Antonio tragedy, the White House wants to crack down on the “criminal smuggling industry. “
“Exploiting other vulnerable people for benefit is shameful, as is political demagoguery around a tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything imaginable to prevent smugglers and human traffickers from taking credit for others seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry. ” President Joe Biden said at a public hearing on June 28.
According to the White House, an “anti-smuggling campaign” in partnership with other nations has led to more than 2400 arrests in the first 3 months since its launch. The White House did not postpone TIME’s request for more main points about the detainees and the fees that oppose them.
Read more: Biden’s management applauds new foreign migration deal. Experts say it probably wouldn’t do much
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, blamed Biden for the deaths in San Antonio. “These deaths are Biden’s,” Abbott said on Twitter on June 27. “They are the result of their fatal open borders policies. fatal consequences of his refusal to the law.
Yet many experts say it was disincentives that contributed to the San Antonio tragedy: policies that tightened the border instead of relaxing it. Since the 1990s, the United States has relied on strict border control policies that are intended to deter other people from making illegal crossings. Some of these policies make the migratory adventure more harmful. When immigration officials focused their resources on urban spaces along the border and access points, for example, those who tried to bypass legal process had to traverse damaging terrain, resulting in deaths and increased reliance on immigration officials. smugglers. Recent policies like Title 42, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which require asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their asylum claim is adjudicated, and some of the Trump-era “zero tolerance” policies that included separation from the circle of relatives, are noted as such a deterrent. measurements via mavens. Biden management continued to enforce the bans under Title 42 and the MPP. (A federal court has said Biden’s management cannot terminate Title 42, a ruling the administration is appealing, yet the Supreme Court recently said it could dismantle MPP. )
“[The United States] hopes that if enough of those other people die, that they will be devoted, that they will be deterred from coming,” De Leon said. “But obviously that hasn’t been the case. Thousands of other people Migrants know the risks all too well and yet they arrive, in conditions to pass into the desert, they are in a position to get on the back of a semi-trailer, which means that the things they drive are much worse.