Inexorable Pressure
Presidential Advisor Stephen Miller was interviewed on CBS Sunday morning. Miller, always primed for a fight, was asked about the death of a seven-year old Guatemalan child while in the custody of the Border Patrol. She was with her father and one hundred and sixty one some others; picked up in the New Mexican desert north of the border. She died of heat exhaustion.
Miller expressed his sorrow at the loss, and described it as a tragedy. He then placed the responsibility for her death on the “coyotes;” the smugglers on the Mexican side that take willing immigrants out to unprotected areas of the border, then point them towards the North. Hundreds have died trying to make the journey into the United States, most of the survivors are picked up and taken into custody by US authorities.
There was no discussion of the US Border Patrol agents, who failed to immediately recognize the condition of the child. It was only after an hour bus ride arriving at their headquarters that her situation was realized. She was flown by helicopter to the hospital, but it was too late.
Miller wasn’t altogether wrong. The “coyotes” are making their money, literally sending people out into the wilderness to fend for themselves. But it is the larger picture, the impact of the Administration’s border policy, that is creating the inexorable pressure on the migrants to find a way into the US. They can’t cross legally, the Department of Homeland Security has refused to send additional judges to determine asylum requests, so thousands wait in Mexican border towns to get the opportunity to legally enter the US. The number accepted to enter and ask for asylum, is less than one hundred per day, so few that migrants are assigned numbers (carefully written in ink on their forearms, an echo of history that should strike close to home for older generations of Miller’s family.)
So as the legal crossings are squeezed to near-closed, migrants are trapped in the border towns, often living in the open air, on hand-outs, and prey to crime. When the conditions become intolerable there, the migrants have few choices: find a way to continue their journey, or return to a home they have abandoned. For only a few hundred dollars, the “coyotes” offer a way onward.
So sure, it is the “coyotes” fault that this child was in the desert. And it was, according to the Washington Examiner, the parent’s fault: “A Guatemalan girl dies of dehydration after her father drags her through the New Mexico desert and the media immediately blame Trump.” On the surface, that is all true.
The migrants have already made a dangerous choice: to leave their homes on a trek of thousands of miles, living in the outdoors for month, at the mercy of smugglers who are interested in profit, not care. This is not the Underground Railroad of America before the Civil War, but these migrants are taking similar risks for similar reasons. The lives they have in Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras is intolerable: just like the slaves who ran North to freedom, they are trying to find a better life for themselves and their children.
We never faulted those slaves who didn’t make it to freedom, who were betrayed for money, or died of exposure. We understood why they ran away, the atrocity of slavery forcing them to risk their families’ lives. They were heroic, following the North Star.
It’s not about open borders, allowing anyone to cross without controls. But there is a recognition of reality required: that these migrants are fleeing a life so intolerable that they are choosing to take the risks, because those are less certain than the risks they are taking by remaining at home. They need to be treated as the heroes and victims they are, not as some “criminal horde” trying to invade America.
If we are looking to place blame, we should start on the conditions in Central America that force them to leave. We should look at the criminalization of the migration process, where profit margin rules all. And we should recognize that the United States of America should act as a nation of mercy, not fear. Our fear has squeezed the border so tight, that we are creating the inexorable pressure that led a father to take his daughter into the desert to die. We are better than this.
