On May 24, a state trooper from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) stopped a Ford F-250 hauling a horse trailer in Hidalgo County and discovered 27 illegal migrants in distress. It’s regrettable that stories like this have become so common in the midst of the chaos at the Southwest border that the inhumanity there is now mundane and “unnewsworthy”. It’s up to us all to reverse this trend.
“27 Illegal Immigrants Inside Horse Trailer”. There once was a time, early in my immigration career, when you had to sort through varying accounts to assess their veracity. Thanks to bodycams and X (formerly Twitter), outside observers can now see the chaos and its costs for themselves.
On May 29, DPS spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez issued the following tweet:
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1795807914050904419&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fcis.org%2FArthur%2F27-Migrants-Rescued-Horse-Trailer-Texas&sessionId=0581090987668c132c7e1362f43a3633aa8baa7f&siteScreenName=CIS_org&siteUserId=95480831&theme=light&widgetsVersion=2615f7e52b7e0%3A1702314776716&width=550px
As that tweet reveals, the driver was one Jose Guadalupe Salinas, a resident of Palmview, Texas, and you can hear the back and forth between him and the troopers as he initially dissembles about his load and then accepts his fate.
The Frog in the Boiling Water. Everything that unfolds in that video used to be exceptional: The discovery of the migrants, their distress at being crammed into a horse trailer, and the apprehensions of the smugglers. None of those things are exceptional anymore.
Lest you think I am waxing nostalgic, when 70 migrants were found in a tractor trailer in Victoria, Texas, in May 2003 — 19 of whom died from dehydration and associated aliments — it was national news. Fourteen years later, in 2017, the Washington Post was still reporting on what the paper referred to as “the nation’s deadliest and most thoroughly documented human trafficking case”.
In June 2022, when 64 migrants were discovered in a tractor-trailer abandoned in 100-degree heat just outside of San Antonio, Texas — 53 of whom were either dead or dying — it received scant attention nationally. That was even after the driver — who was described as “high on meth” and attempting “to pass himself off as a migrant to avoid arrest” — was facing the death penalty for his actions.
In fact, Salinas’ resignation simply shows how mundane this entire scene has become. Smuggling is no longer a one-off thing: He likely wasn’t the only smuggler on that stretch of road that night. He was just the only one that troopers identified.
In December 2020, a month before President Biden took office, my colleague Mark Krikorian posited that the incoming administration would incrementally implement policies to roll back border security (an analysis that’s proved prescient, if a bit understated), and used the analogy of the “frog in the boiling water” to describe how that process would play out. As I explained thereafter:
For those not familiar with frog boiling, it is a common analogy for any action that is done slowly to hide true intentions and inevitable outcomes. It is based on the premise that a frog put in boiling water will jump out and save itself, but a frog put in room-temperature water that is slowly heated will not sense it is being cooked until it is too late.
When it has come to the banal inhumanity occurring at the border, the frog in this analogy is boiling itself. We have become so inured to the fact that smugglers are ruthless and heartless that their ruthlessness and heartless actions are shined on as mere recklessness, accepted as simple facts, or worse, ignored.
Transporting human beings in the back of an enclosed trailer through the sweltering heat of south Texas in the late spring is so criminally reckless that it borders on sadistic. And yet in its commonality it is largely accepted as a fact of life by the media, the smugglers, and the migrants themselves.
Here, the smuggler doesn’t appear to be sorry for what he did — only that he got caught doing it.
The same, however, is true of the tens of thousands of aliens pouring over the Southwest border each month. Through its policies, the administration has de facto absolved them of any culpability for their blithe indifference to either our nation’s sovereignty or the illegality of their actions.
Worse, the White House has gone so far as to describe the waving through of the ones who show up at the ports of entry without any documents or any right to enter the United States into the country as “encouraging” aliens “to seek orderly and lawful pathways to migration”, despite the fact that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) treats those aliens exactly the same as illegal entrants.
“Let Not Any One Pacify His Conscience.” In 1867, philosopher John Stuart Mill made a comment, variations of which have subsequently been attributed to other luminaries (mainly Edmund Burke, including by JFK):
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.
Among the Center’s missions is informing Americans about the actions being “committed in their names” as relates to immigration. And presently, those actions are abetting the worst sorts of inhumanity at the Southwest border. You can heed John Stuart Mill’s wise counsel, or you can “do nothing”.
Topics: Biden Border Crisis