Tragedy shows risks migrants choose to take
By CLARK KAUFFMAN
Register Staff Writer
10/16/2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday was tough on Tomas Zuniga of the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Dallas, Texas.
His day began with a briefing on the discovery Monday of 11 bodies in a rail car 641 miles to the north in Denison, Ia. The 11 were believed to be immigrants who had entered the United States illegally.
"You should have seen us at the staff meeting this morning," Zuniga, spokesman for the INS central region office, said Tuesday afternoon. "We all had these long faces. . . . It's terrible when this happens. It's terrible, terrible, terrible."
The grain car arrived Sunday in Denison from Oklahoma, and the victims had clearly been dead for weeks, said Tom Hogan, the Crawford County sheriff.
The car was moved Tuesday to Des Moines, where firefighters with cutting torches extracted the 11 victims. The bodies were taken to a morgue at Broadlawns Medical Center, and workers from the Iowa Medical Examiner's Office began inspections of the remains.
The victims were all adults, but officials were unable to immediately identify their sex or nationality. A forensic anthropologist will assist in a grim identification process, which could take months.
Sgt. Robert Hansen of the Iowa Department of Public Safety said Tuesday that foul play was not suspected in the deaths. The bodies showed no signs of wounds or broken bones, he said.
But the alternative scenarios described by officials in Iowa and elsewhere were no more comforting: The victims, apparently immigrants from Mexico or Central America, probably died of suffocation, starvation or heat exhaustion after the empty grain car left Matamoros, Mexico, on June 15 - 1,200 miles south of Iowa.
"It is a human tragedy," said Hogan.
It's the responsibility of the immigration service to inspect railroad cars as they come into the United States from Mexico to make sure they don't carry illegal human cargo. But some illegal immigrants slip through the inspection or hop aboard the train - or van or truck - just afterward.
Long hours locked in small, crowded compartments with little food and water can be deadly. Smugglers who charge thousands of dollars for safe passage into the United States sometimes abandon their clients once the money is in hand, said Zuniga of the INS. Locked in overheated rail cars or stranded in open desert, the would-be immigrants are left to fend for themselves.
Before long, survival becomes more important than immigration. It's not unusual for people locked inside cargo vans or boxcars to call for help - even though they know it will mean discovery and deportation.
"Bless their souls"
"These individuals, bless their souls, once they realize they are in jeopardy, they will make a lot of noise," Zuniga said. "We've been in situations where these people are literally just hours away from death. . . . We have rescued thousands of people each year who are left in these situations by smugglers."
Zuniga said it wasn't clear why the people found dead in Denison weren't able to summon help once they realized they were in danger.
"They might have been out of earshot," he said.
Help comes too late for others, too.
"There's the desert, the cold, the heat, the snakes, the river, the scorpions, the spiders, the bandits and, worst of all, the smugglers," Zuniga said. "These guys, all they want is your money. They will abandon you at the drop of a pin. They take you to a certain point and tell you, 'We'll be right back,' and that's the last you see of them."
"It's very bad"
Miguel Valadez, 23, a Mexican immigrant who works at El Burrito restaurant in Denison, said he didn't understand why someone would take the risk of getting into a railroad car.
"It's very bad," Valadez said in his native Spanish.
Mark Davis, a spokesman for the Union Pacific Railroad, said he is amazed at the risks people take.
"It's just tragic," he said. "It's people who - right or wrong - will find ways of endangering themselves to find a better life."
In recent years, there have been at least two other cases of large groups of illegal immigrants dying inside locked railroad cars, but federal data show trucks or vans are more frequently used, with many more deaths resulting. Since 1999, there have been 27 immigrant deaths in rail cars or on train tracks, compared with 125 motor-vehicle deaths. Drowning and exposure are the leading causes of immigrant deaths.
Zuniga said the Denison case was being examined from all angles.
"If, in fact, this was a smuggling operation, we want to identify who did it and hopefully bring him to justice either here or in Mexico," he said. "This is a tragic loss of innocent life."
By CLARK KAUFFMAN
Register Staff Writer
10/16/2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday was tough on Tomas Zuniga of the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Dallas, Texas.
His day began with a briefing on the discovery Monday of 11 bodies in a rail car 641 miles to the north in Denison, Ia. The 11 were believed to be immigrants who had entered the United States illegally.
"You should have seen us at the staff meeting this morning," Zuniga, spokesman for the INS central region office, said Tuesday afternoon. "We all had these long faces. . . . It's terrible when this happens. It's terrible, terrible, terrible."
The grain car arrived Sunday in Denison from Oklahoma, and the victims had clearly been dead for weeks, said Tom Hogan, the Crawford County sheriff.
The car was moved Tuesday to Des Moines, where firefighters with cutting torches extracted the 11 victims. The bodies were taken to a morgue at Broadlawns Medical Center, and workers from the Iowa Medical Examiner's Office began inspections of the remains.
The victims were all adults, but officials were unable to immediately identify their sex or nationality. A forensic anthropologist will assist in a grim identification process, which could take months.
Sgt. Robert Hansen of the Iowa Department of Public Safety said Tuesday that foul play was not suspected in the deaths. The bodies showed no signs of wounds or broken bones, he said.
But the alternative scenarios described by officials in Iowa and elsewhere were no more comforting: The victims, apparently immigrants from Mexico or Central America, probably died of suffocation, starvation or heat exhaustion after the empty grain car left Matamoros, Mexico, on June 15 - 1,200 miles south of Iowa.
"It is a human tragedy," said Hogan.
It's the responsibility of the immigration service to inspect railroad cars as they come into the United States from Mexico to make sure they don't carry illegal human cargo. But some illegal immigrants slip through the inspection or hop aboard the train - or van or truck - just afterward.
Long hours locked in small, crowded compartments with little food and water can be deadly. Smugglers who charge thousands of dollars for safe passage into the United States sometimes abandon their clients once the money is in hand, said Zuniga of the INS. Locked in overheated rail cars or stranded in open desert, the would-be immigrants are left to fend for themselves.
Before long, survival becomes more important than immigration. It's not unusual for people locked inside cargo vans or boxcars to call for help - even though they know it will mean discovery and deportation.
"Bless their souls"
"These individuals, bless their souls, once they realize they are in jeopardy, they will make a lot of noise," Zuniga said. "We've been in situations where these people are literally just hours away from death. . . . We have rescued thousands of people each year who are left in these situations by smugglers."
Zuniga said it wasn't clear why the people found dead in Denison weren't able to summon help once they realized they were in danger.
"They might have been out of earshot," he said.
Help comes too late for others, too.
"There's the desert, the cold, the heat, the snakes, the river, the scorpions, the spiders, the bandits and, worst of all, the smugglers," Zuniga said. "These guys, all they want is your money. They will abandon you at the drop of a pin. They take you to a certain point and tell you, 'We'll be right back,' and that's the last you see of them."
"It's very bad"
Miguel Valadez, 23, a Mexican immigrant who works at El Burrito restaurant in Denison, said he didn't understand why someone would take the risk of getting into a railroad car.
"It's very bad," Valadez said in his native Spanish.
Mark Davis, a spokesman for the Union Pacific Railroad, said he is amazed at the risks people take.
"It's just tragic," he said. "It's people who - right or wrong - will find ways of endangering themselves to find a better life."
In recent years, there have been at least two other cases of large groups of illegal immigrants dying inside locked railroad cars, but federal data show trucks or vans are more frequently used, with many more deaths resulting. Since 1999, there have been 27 immigrant deaths in rail cars or on train tracks, compared with 125 motor-vehicle deaths. Drowning and exposure are the leading causes of immigrant deaths.
Zuniga said the Denison case was being examined from all angles.
"If, in fact, this was a smuggling operation, we want to identify who did it and hopefully bring him to justice either here or in Mexico," he said. "This is a tragic loss of innocent life."
