Another Migrant Tragedy

"The agents told them that stormy cold weather conditions were ideal cover to cross into the U.S. undetected. They said it was their best opportunity and last chance to cross into the United States or return to India or stay back in Canada."

"'You have to walk in -35 degree Celsius to evade arrest by Canadian or U.S. security agents. Follow the lights of an American gas station because you will find no navigation available in the dark and extreme weather'."

Indian police official

 

"The victims were taken to Toronto in Canada and later to Vancouver. The agents then dumped them at Winnipeg in Manitoba province, leaving them to cross over to the U.S. on their own."

"[The migrants were] forced [to] walk in the snow [to cross the border]."

"There are deputy agents, main agents in India. The crossing agents in Canada and the U.S. help with legal and other assistance."

"The two wanted accused are agents from Canada and the United States."

Deputy Commissioner of Police Chaitanya Mandlik

Jagdish Patel, left; son Dharmik; wife Vaishali and daughter Vihangi are shown in this family photo released to the media at the time of their death in January 2022. Two men in India have now been charged with acting as immigration agents, culpable homicide, human trafficking and criminal conspiracy, in relation to the deaths of the Patels. (Vaishali Patel/Facebook)

 

It was a year ago that the bodies frozen in the snow on frigid winter terrain were found. They had set out with a larger group of an additional eleven people hoping to make the passage on foot from Manitoba during blizzard conditions. In the dark of night and white-out blizzard conditions, feeling the misery of -34degree Centigrade probing relentlessly through their winter parkas and boots, they became disoriented and separated from the larger group. They were a father, mother and two children, ages three and eleven.

Of the larger group of eleven, seven made their way to safety. After walking through these abysmal conditions for over eleven hours, the seven were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol officers. The cause of death for Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben Patel, 37, their daughter Vihangi, and three-year-old son Dharmik was ascribed to exposure to extreme cold. These were people originally from western India, the state of Gujarat, and they knew little about survival in Arctic conditions.

Theirs is a preventable tragedy. There have been others caught out in foul winter weather in isolated terrain who have suffered from frostbite, to the extent of losing limbs, in their determination to reach a desired destination. This family lost everything. The trend to illegal migration, to enter a country, pass through its borders surreptitiously rather than undergoing the lengthy process of legal immigration is on the rise everywhere. 

Patel family home in India

 

Elsewhere, the crossings themselves are so fraught with danger -- usually those undertaken by sea passage on inadequate vessels holding too many hopeful migrants -- the carnage of drowning deaths is pitifully large. There are opportunistic migrants, and there are people desperate to escape endemic poverty, discrimination, local violence, drugs, and conflict.Usually refugees listed with the United Nations have a fairly good chance of being accepted by Western democratic nations.

The aspiration to join a wealthy country for the imagined promises of future stability, acceptance, wealth, a good education for children and access to universal health services has its draw on people who believe that other countries' residents enjoy a superior, material and political way of life. The family of four that perished on a cold stormy winter night walking across the border form Canada into the United States chose a risky way of achieving their goal.

They were prepared to pay handsomely for the services of people smugglers, never imagining that they would be paying for a horrible trial that would end in the deaths of their two vulnerable children and themselves under dreadful circustances. Now, India has arrested two of four human traffickers they name as 'agents' who acted as seasoned enablers for unlawful entry across a country's borders, with the intention of living on an underground economy, or declaring themselves refugees to await an official government decision on acceptance or rejection of their claim.

 

 

The Patel family was reported to have been reluctant to cross the border under such extreme weather conditions, but that they succumbed to the assurances of the 'agents' looking after their aspirational welfare. Two of the smugglers were arrested and charged with culpable homicide, although four in total are suspected to have formed an illegal immigration network recruiting citizens of India who are able to pay the toll demanded to smuggle them into the United States.

The other two suspects forming the gang of four have been identified as one in Canada and another in the United States; 'crossing agents'. They were to be paid some $10,000 per person for smuggling these people to their destination of choice. So these were not people trying to escape poverty, but rather people from the world's largest democracy, hoping to enter the United States illegally to make a new life for themselves there; their rationale for that choice is unclear.

The group of illegal migrants a year ago in the care of organized smugglers had the benefit of being given identical cold weather clothing consisting of new winter coats with fur-trimmed hoods, gloves, ski masks and insulated rubber boots. The alleged driver assigned to pick the migrants up on their entry to Minnesota was arrested soon after the discovery of the bodies of the Patel family. His case is yet to be heard in court while authorities in the U.S. continue to investigate the human smuggling ring.

The Helpless Plight of Tafficked Migrants

"Exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to stop human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who are seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry."

U.S. President Joe Biden

 

"They had just parked it [the truck] on the side of the road."

"Apparently [the truck] had mechanical problems and [the driver and his co-smugglers] left it there."

"The sheriff thinks it came across from Laredo."

Bexar Country Judge Nelson Wolff

The abandoned truck was discovered after a nearby worker heard cries for help   Getty Images

 

Difficult to fathom even with the tension involved in engaging in an illegal act, that anyone knowing there are scores of people, including children, in the back of the truck they're diving panicking -- their first impulse to put as much distance between themselves and the impaired truck with its helpless passengers -- in a belated effort to divorce themselves from what comes next. Discovery of course, coming next, apprehension by policing authorities for being involved in a human smuggling racket. 

 

And in that moment of 'escape', failing to consider the impact on the doomed people locked inside the trailer. They could just as easily and humanely unlocked the trailer doors to release the people within from the heat trap that eventually took their lives. They had already entered the United States, which was their goal. The people could have dispersed, making their way to an eventual destination. They would certainly have received help from others along the way. Instead, they were consigned to death.

It was a city worker that raised the alert after hearing a cry for help from the truck that had been left on a remote back road outside San Antonio, Texas. He opened the doors to the trailer and made that grisly discovery. When police arrived, efforts at restoring life to some of the people who had succumbed to heat prostration, suffocating in the airless trailer, sent some people to hospital. While forty-six people were discovered to be beyond help at the scene, another four after being hospitalized died there. 

Mourners visit the isolated Texas road where the abandoned truck was found with dozens of dead people inside  Getty Images

 

There were 39 men and 11 women among the dead who were left in the back of an abandoned tractor-trailer where there was no way forward for the trapped people looking for opportunity and a new life, to disengage from their situation. Two Guatemalen boys, ages 13 and 14 were among the dead. Those who died "Were likely trying to find a better life. This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy", observed San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

The countries of origin of the migrants have not yet been fully identified, nor how long the unfortunate migrants had been abandoned to certain death. What is known is that twenty-two came from Mexico, seven from Guatemala, and two from Honduras, another two from El Salvador, according to Roberto Velasco Alvarez, head of Mexico's Foreign Relations Department, North America department.

The driver of the truck, identified as Homero Zamo, evidently made an attempt to pose as a victim, hiding in nearby bushes, before he was arrested. To the present, the total death toll is now 53 with several more of the migrants trapped in the truck having died in hospital. Minors are among the people who remain in hospital. In addition to the detention in police custody of the driver, another two Mexican men have been detained as accomplices.