Maeve Higgins: We must offer migrants and asylum seekers legal and secure routes to safety

Desperate people are risking their lives to flee poverty and violence because migration laws make it impossible for them to get there safely

A man holds up a portrait of Wilmer Tulul, in Tzucubal, Guatemala, last week; Wilmer
and his cousin Pascual, both 13 years old, were among the dead discovered inside a trailer on the edge of San Antonio, Texas, almost two weeks ago. Picture: Moises Castillo/AP

IT’S been almost two weeks since 53 migrants were killed in Texas, suffocating in a trailer on their journey into the US.

We can now learn their names and see their faces because their families shared information and photos of some of the dead, back when they were alive and well.

The victims included 27 people from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala, and two from El Salvador.

Among the dead were two cousins and best friends, Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepas and Pascual Melvin Guachiac Sipac. Reports from The Associated Press put the boys’ age at 13.

They came from a tiny indigenous Quiche community in the mountains, about 100 miles from Guatemala City, the country’s capital. They left on June 14, two weeks before their bodies were found in the back of a truck on the outskirts of San Antonio.

Fleeing poverty and violence

Magdalena Tepaz, centre, and Manuel de Jesus Tulul, right, parents of Wilmer Tulul, wait for the start of a community meeting in Tzucubal, Guatemala, after the loss of their son. Picture: AP Photo/Moises Castillo

The man accused of driving and abandoning the truck and an accused conspirator have been charged in US federal court on Wednesday with human trafficking offenses.

If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison or possibly, the US Justice department said in a statement, the death penalty.

It’s extraordinary that the government issued such death threats, considering their own complicity in the crime. Many within the US government, including US president Joe Biden, have publicly blamed these smugglers and traffickers for the migrant deaths.

That isn’t quite right because it’s far from the whole story. It’s like the school bully gripping your hands and making you hit yourself, then telling you to stop hitting yourself and blaming you for getting hurt.

The people in the trailer had no choice except to be in it because migration laws in the US made it impossible for them to get there in any safe way. These deadly migration laws are not unique to Americans.

More people are on the move now than at any time since the Second World War, and the US is far from alone in ramping up its legal and physical barriers to entry.

Forcing people to take ever more treacherous routes to safety is part of a dangerous global trend lead by wealthy countries like Australia, Britain, and European Union members, including Ireland.

The children and adults killed in the truck in San Antonio had made it across the border to the US before they died, adding a tragic sense of irony to their plight.

The same week as the horror in Texas unfolded, another played out in a tiny port city in Africa called Melilla, a so-called ‘autonomous community’ bordering Morocco on the Mediterranean Sea.

Different irony

Melilla is the only EU land border with Africa, and this is where a reported 37 people died on June 24.

In a different but just as ugly irony, migrants there were met and killed by border policies created thousands of miles away from where they died.

In Melilla, colonising powers never left Africa; they just changed shape. Spain kept Melilla as an exclave after Morocco gained their independence in 1956 and today uses all manner of legal and physical barriers to keep African migrants out.

Writing ‘African migrants’ in this context feels strange and inaccurate. It only makes sense if you have the worst kind of imperialist mind.

Melilla is of the continent of Africa, but Europe has claimed it and built a moat, a detention centre, and a giant metal fence with watch towers looming amongst metres upon metres of razor wire.

People gather during a protest at Callao square in Madrid, over the deaths of 37 people at the border between the Spanish enclave of Melilla and Morocco. Picture: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez

It is unclear exactly how the 37 people were killed, with opposing accounts from the migrants and the Spanish and Moroccan authorities. The latter claimed there was a stampede and that many people fell from the high fences, and the Spanish first minister Pedro Sanchez alleged an “organised and vicious assault” by the migrants.

The migrants deny this, claiming it was the authorities who brutalised them. The Moroccan Association of Human Rights shared images and videos online of police and border patrol in riot gear beating motionless migrants as they lay bleeding on the ground, packed together and held there in the aftermath of their attempt to get through the fence.

Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch, quoted in The Guardian newspaper, said: “Video and photographs show bodies strewn on the ground in pools of blood, Moroccan security forces kicking and beating people, and Spanish Guardia Civil launching tear gas at men clinging to fences.”

This brutality caused a fierce backlash in Spain, with protesters in major cities taking to the streets to call for safe passage.

The Catalan MEP, Riba i Giner, asked: “With what face can Europe dare to talk about human rights when it tramples them underfoot by being complicit in cold-blooded murder on its own doorstep?”

She contrasted the beatings and killings in Melilla to the open arms the same European governments offer Ukrainians.

We demonstrated it with Ukraine. If we want to, we can.

The UN Committee on Migrant Workers made a statement calling for an investigation into what caused the deaths. It said:

“We deplore the violations of the right to life, which is enshrined in the International Convention on Migrant Workers. Based on the information we have gathered, we remind all States that migrants shall not be subjected to any cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

“States must also guarantee that all policies and practices at borders effectively respect all human rights obligations, ensuring the right to life, dignity, security and physical integrity of migrants in all circumstances.”

Wealthier, whiter countries have locked ourselves into fortresses and are killing — daily and from a distance — the men, women, and children who try to join us.

In Texas and Melilla last month, scores of people, including Juan and Pascual, the young cousins from Guatemala, were killed by deadly migration laws.

Nobody, be they Ukrainian, Honduran, or Eritrean, should be forced to scale a razor wire fence or cram into the back of a truck to reach safety.

It’s up to us to stop forcing them.

Europe, Australia, Britain, and the US must offer migrants and asylum seekers legal and secure routes to safety. This is possible; our ancestors proved it so.

Today, Ireland is a comfortable member of the European Union, quietly making and funding the draconian immigration laws that lead to much suffering and death.

In the past, millions of people from Ireland fled and resettled, arriving in nations with far fewer resources than today.

It is true that Irish migrants of the past were not exactly embraced in places like Britain, the US, and Australia, but just as true and much more salient is that they were allowed in.