More than 100 Haitians found in trailer in Guatemala as desperate efforts to reach U.S. continue

[Judi Lynn]

Migrants, mostly from Haiti, are detained in Tapachula, Mexico, on Sept. 11. (Juan Manuel Blanco/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

By Miriam Berger
Today at 4:44 p.m. EDT


Guatemalan police rescued 126 mainly Haitian migrants from an abandoned shipping container on the side of a road Saturday — highlighting how the desperate flow of people from Haiti and across South America has not abated despite the recent wave of U.S. deportations.

Guatemalan authorities said they searched the trailer around dawn after residents heard screams coming from within, the BBC reported. The shipping container was found in an area between the towns of Nueva Concepción and Cocales in the country’s south.

Police spokesman Jorge Aguilar told reporters that of the 126 undocumented people found inside, 106 were from Haiti, 11 from Nepal and nine from Ghana, AFP reported. Police suspect they had paid to be illegally taken to the United States via Mexico by smugglers, who instead abandoned them on the road.

The treacherous journey appears to have begun in Honduras, said a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s migration authority, Alejandra Mena, the BBC reported. After first-aid checks on the migrants and asylum seekers, Guatemalan officials said, they would be deported back to Honduras and taken into custody there.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/10/guatemala-migrants-haiti-smuggling-shipping-containers/

[Demovictory9]

1. Faux nooze is running Haitian migrant storirs daily to keep magats riled up

Anti migrant stuff helped trump into white house

[Skittles]

2. I feel so sorry for these folk

the desperation they feel, to put themselves through such an ordeal

[ymetca]

3. I sometimes wish

Democrats would do what we're always being accused of doing and let them all in, fast-track their citizenship, get 'em registered to vote and then tell them VOTE DEMOCRAT! Stick it to that fascist, racist mob running the right.

All this hem hawing around what it means to somehow "qualify" for citizenship just sticks in my craw. My ancestors escaped European pogroms, potato famines, and all sorts of oppression to get here. No different today other than, hmm.. let me think.. darker skin tone? Yeah, I'm thinkin' that might be it.

But those so-called "inalienable" rights aren't bestowed upon us by being a citizen.

Our rights come first, and our laws second. That's why they're "inalienable". You're not allowed to legislate them away (which we have done, countless times, of course).

This nation isn't an exclusive country club, or it wasn't supposed to be, and last I looked we fought a Civil War over that exact problem.

And we're still wrestling over archaic, racist political mechanisms holding us back, like the Senate and the Electoral College, which do nothing more than protect the wealthy having to abide by an actual, full democracy.

That's why we have Republicans running around declaring, oh no, we're not really a Democracy, but a Republic, and so some of y'all just ain't got no rights!

But there really is no border, no door you have to be admitted through, to obtain your rights, no matter who you are, or where you come from. They're yours, just by being alive here on planet Earth. Period. End of story. No iffs ands or buts.

Pretty much every fight since has been over this. And it's the whole problem of the racist ideology of the Nation/State, which (some of) our Founders tried desperately to overcome.

We were not supposed to be like all those others nations in the past. We were to be, as a people, overall, "free". That was the aspiration.

And that spirit was strong enough to gain consensus to put those words in there, despite the power of the slave-lords of the South, and their rancid three-fifths compromise.

Thus was born the ideal, all ugly with its "original sin", which we still to this day reverently call "The American Dream".

It's really the only thing we got over any other nation. And it has always, always, been the immigrants' dream.

Who knows, maybe it was just a way to justify the slaughter of the folks who already lived here. Yep. I'd even suggest maybe it was even mostly that. A bunch of desperate people, hungry, angry, terrified, abused, just passing that abuse along. Like eons of psychosis, deprivation and want, all pent up, exploding onto these shores. Sure, I'll grant that. We got to accept that.

Hell, it was only the examples of indigenous tribes here that put the ideals of individual rights and a full democratic engagement into our thick European heads. Like we had forgotten it, after all that time under lords and kings and emperors, etc. I guess too many just wanted their turn to be one. Like one giant sadomasochistic urge had been built up over there. Who knows!

So I will say that we are all, ultimately, strangers in a strange land, wherever we might be, and try to cut that Gordian Knot for good.

We should be letting them all in, letting them vote (and the prisoners too!), and letting them help fix this fucking mess we made!