Three Children, Young Woman Found Dead Near US-Mexico Border

By Paul Blest, Splinter

24 June 19

merica’s horrific immigration policy has a body count, and it keeps piling up.

According to the New York Times, the bodies of four people, “including what appeared to be the body of a migrant woman,” two infants and a toddler, were discovered on Sunday night at the edge of the Rio Grande near McAllen, TX. Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra said on Twitter late Sunday night that the bodies had been found, and later told the Times that the woman appeared to be the mother of some, but not all, of the children found with her.

Thus far, none of the four have been publicly identified by authorities; Guerra said that because the bodies had been found on federal land, the FBI would lead the investigation. Guerra also told the Times that the four didn’t drown, but that it was possible they had died of dehydration.

In 2018, more than 260 migrants died crossing the southern border. As the Times notes, these deaths are all too common, but “it is rare for officials to discover dead migrant children on the American side of the border, and rarer still for the bodies of three children to be found together at the same time.”

For years, Border Patrol agents have been accused of destroying water and other supplies left for migrants in arduous border-crossing conditions. (Border Patrol has said it does not condone such activities.) In January 2018, the Tuscon-based organizations No More Deaths and La Coalición de Derechos Humanos released a report claiming that they found 415 gallons of water vandalized in the Arizona desert over the course of nearly four years, before President Donald Trump even took office.

Since then, the government has cracked down even harder. Earlier this month, an Arizona jury couldn’t reach a verdict on the case of No More Deaths volunteer Scott David Warren, who was on trial for “harboring and conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants”—i.e., providing food, water, and other supplies to undocumented people—a charge that carried a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

And as we’ve seen, things aren’t much better in federal custody, either. Last week, the Department of Justice argued in federal court that it wasn’t legally obligated to provide soap, toothbrushes, and beds for detained children in American custody. When asked about this on CNN, Vice President Mike Pence just chuckled and said it was “part of the appropriations process.”

These people are monsters.