Up Against the Wall. Peter Laufer

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СКАЧАТЬ we had to worry about.” Sheriff Ratcliff tends to speak in official-sounding jargon, with words such as “dissipated” and “co-victims.” But after just a few minutes discussing with him then the worst case of human smuggling in U.S. history, his compassion is obvious.

      “We had some witnesses, co-victims, if you will, who described the number of people in the vehicle. We could estimate that as many as 60 to 90 people were on the ground in our community. We had to deal with that problem as well.”

      While Customs and Border Protection, with a special ICE investigative team, raced to Victoria to take over the federalized investigation, Ratcliff’s detectives hunted down the truck driver, Tyrone Powers, finding him a few hours after he ran from the tragedy.

      The sheriff is still shaken six months later when he retells the story of that dreadful night. His deputies called him to come quickly, which was no problem. His home is just a mile and a half from the crime scene. He feels no mercy for the ring of smugglers and their driver.

      “It’s difficult for me as a 26-year veteran of law enforcement to consider that a person doesn’t know the cargo in his van,” he says about Powers’ initial defense tactic. “Human cargo is unacceptable. The thought of human beings trapped, encapsulated in that trailer and brought to our country, or taken anywhere in 100 degree weather is totally …” his voice trails off for a few seconds. “Well, it’s just unacceptable.”

      What’s the correct penalty for such a crime?

      “Should a person be put to death for the death of nineteen people?” He considers the question. “I would tell you in my estimation, if they did it one time, they could do it again because greed seemed to premise everything. If greed allowed them to do it that one time to nineteen people, and that little boy, then the opportunity for them to do it again would not be changed by anything but death.”

      Driver Powers did finally open the trailer door. Was that an act of humanity? No, says the Sheriff, it was a result of stupidity.

      His stupidity ran out when his human resources came into play and he decided to buy water for some of the victims and he opened the doors to the trailer. That was when stupidity was overcome by human nature. But the one factor to be considered is that if he did this one time, there is the potential that he could do this again. And the world can’t stand that loss of life. Our community will not overcome that tragedy. We are now the site of the most tragic immigrant loss of lives in our nation’s history.

      Oil and cattle were the magic that made Victoria famous during its booming past. Back in the 1930s ranchers around Victoria began discovering oil and natural gas under their rangeland. By the 1950s Victoria boasted more millionaires per capita than any other American city. Today memories of those times are enhanced by the stately Victorian homes still scattered throughout the city. The Sheriff’s office is in the heart of the old downtown, a modern concrete and glass building just off the old city square. Sheriff Ratcliff clearly wishes a truckload of dead immigrants had not replaced oil and cattle as his city’s reason for notoriety.

      “As sheriff of the county, I will do whatever I can to ensure that our community and our state and our nation never have to undergo that type of tragedy again. We are a caring people. We love fellow human beings. If they come to the country illegally, we will deal with them under the appropriate law.”

      But Ratcliff is convinced the laws need to be changed. “We need to come up with laws that would help these people. We need to create the legal method for people to enter our country to work or go to school or do other things that they feel they need to do to help their families and themselves.”²

      Buried Alive

      Inside that trailer coffin, suffocating with his brother, was Guillermo Cabrera from Veracruz, Mexico. He was on his way to the rolling hills of south-central Kentucky, promised work on a dairy farm.

      “The heat started about eleven, really by nine,” he says about the ride north. “By eleven, twelve you can really feel it. Hot. Some people were already fainted, six or seven. Some friends in there started to faint. And like that: very strong heat, like in Hell, an inferno.”

      Cabrera and I are sitting at a plastic table in what he calls la tiendita, the little store, Paul’s Minute Market at the Key Stop gas station in Temple Hill, Kentucky. Cabrera survived the inferno; his brother died.

      We were both there, but I never saw my brother during the whole crisis. I never saw him again. I couldn’t find him. Where was he? When they opened the door, there were a lot of people lying on the floor of the trailer because it was really hot inside, very hot. But I do not know how I got out of there. Many of us have no idea how we got out of there. We realized that we were alive because God is great.

      Guillermo Cabrera’s eyes tear. He looks away, but keeps telling his story.

      “Later, seven days later, I learned that my brother had died. I was in the hospital. I was there for four days, almost dying. I was really sick. I didn’t know what was going on. Everything was erased.”

      Cabrera is wearing a baseball cap announcing, “Branson, Mo. The Ozarks.” His T-shirt is more specific. It’s a rendition of the Liberty Bell featuring the words, “America” and “Let Freedom Ring.” He drove up to the Minute Market in an old faded red Ford Ranger pickup. We met at seven in the morning. Three old-timers were nursing their coffee behind a sign in the window announcing, “We sell and recommend Coon Hunter’s Pride.”

      “Is it okay to talk here?” I asked him, quietly in Spanish, not knowing his immigration status.

      He assured me it would be no problems and he casually greeted the regulars. Cabrera is one of the lucky ones. Not only did he survive the inferno but the U.S. government also rewarded his trauma by granting him the legal right to stay north of the border.

      Whose fault was the disaster, I ask him.

      “Well, you pay for them to bring you here safe and alive,” he says about the smugglers. “But they don’t know how you are going to arrive. If they are going to put you into a trailer, they should give you fresh air. Since everything is closed, you don’t know what is going to happen in there.”

      He soon knew something was very wrong.

      With all the heat, your head is not working well. Many things start going on in your head. I thought of God, my family, everybody. Many of us survived. We tried to take apart a piece of the wooden door. My brother was one of those who were taking apart the door, because he was really desperate. His hands were all destroyed from that.

      Once the doors opened, Cabrera headed over dead bodies to the fresh air.

      I walked over many people and got down. And then I just collapsed. The ambulance came and they took me to the hospital. I was there for four days, and then they took me to jail for six days. They worked on the permits to allow us to stay in this country legally. They gave me one of those after the accident.

      I suggested a solution so others need not fear sharing his fate in the future: an open border between the two countries so workers could travel north freely. His answer surprised me.

      “No, that would not be possible. All of Mexico would be here.”

      Particularly grating for the sheriff is that the trailer tragedy did not put a dent in the abuse of migrants on the road.

      Nineteen people perished on May 14th and on May 15th eighteen people were stopped approximately ten miles north of that point, СКАЧАТЬ