4/26/23

By Josh Rubin

A few days ago we heard a report from Matamoros that there was a fire in the encampment along the banks of the river. It was in a section on the far end of the camp, a camp where some say as many as a couple of thousand migrants have set up tents and tarps to shelter themselves while waiting for their chance at the brutal lottery that has been set up by the U.S. immigration policies, policies that grow more arcane every day.

A number of those makeshift shelters burned, leaving some of the migrants newly exposed to the sky and the wind and the weather. And, of course, the contents of those shelters perished, too. Those contents were the meager possessions of the folks that slept there. Gone.

And the report we hear from Mexican immigration authorities has suggested that the fire was set by migrants frustrated with the process for getting considered for asylum, frustration with the phone app that gives them a minuscule chance each day, for about a couple of minutes, to make an appointment for such consideration at some port of entry somewhere along that longest border.

Yes. Well, if you like, you can believe that people who have traveled thousands of miles, many through a life threatening jungle, who have risked all to get a chance at crossing to safety, in a fit of impatience decided to burn the little they have managed to keep, to express their frustration. I, for one, think that in a town riddled with corruption and ruled by criminal cartels, there are better candidates for suspicion.

And however it came about, let’s not ignore the ones who put them there, keeping the gates to our gated country locked and loaded, and our eyes blinded to their plight.