46 illegal immigrants found dead in tractor trailer in San Antonio Texas.

 

Police at the scene of the disaster. Reuters/Texas Tribune. 

At least 46 illegal immigrants were found dead in a tractor trailer in San Antonio Texas, near Lackland Air Force Base. Texas Tribune. 16 survivors were brought into hospitals for treatment. Cross border smuggling has been a problem and occasionally people die in hot conditions while being smuggled in tractor trailers. However, this case is much more severe than most incidents of this nature. 

My Comment:

This is hardly the first time this has happened, but the loss of life is fairly stunning. And it might get worse, not all of the people that were rescued from this trailer may survive, meaning the death toll could get even worse. 

Death was fairly predictable with this kind of transport. If people are locked into a trailer with no way to get out and are left in the heat with no water or way to cool themselves they will die in a fairly predictable manner. It's not a good way to go to say the least. 

Whoever did this to these people should be charged to the full extent of the law. This was negligent homicide to say the least and leaving these people to die is terrible. I hope whoever is responsible for this gets the book thrown at them. 

What is shocking to me is that there are safer ways to do this. One would expect a trailer with a refrigerator would be the way to go with this kind of smuggling. Reefer units allow climate control and would bring down the temperatures to survivable levels. It's possible this trailer was equipped with a reefer unit and it coded out and failed but even then it was totally negligent to not keep the trailer cool. 

In the end though, I think at least some of the blame goes onto the Biden administration and their insistence on an open border. Under Trump the border was mostly a solved issue. But once Biden came into power he threw open the gates and this was the predictable result...