Grisly Texas Discovery No Isolated Case

May 14 -- The grisly discovery today in Texas of dead migrants in a tractor-trailer truck is not an isolated case.

"Unfortunately, every year, dozens of people are dying, literally dying, to get into the United States," said Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Authorities said 17 people were found dead today in an airless trailer left at a Texas truck stop, and an 18th person died later at a hospital. There had been more than 100 illegal immigrants locked inside the tailer.

In Des Moines, Iowa, last year, the remains of 11 migrants were found inside a box car, dead from dehydration. In Yuma, Ariz., 14 Mexicans died of thirst while wandering in the desert. And in Sierra Blanca, Texas, 18 immigrants died inside a locked boxcar where the temperature rose to 130 degrees.

All of these people had paid smugglers to bring them into the United States — smugglers who took all their money and abandoned them.

"If there's any trend, it is that the smugglers and the transporters are becoming more callous and indifferent to human life," said Asa Hutchinson, the federal undersecretary for border and transportation security in the Department of Homeland Security.

Thousands Make Risky Trip

Despite crackdowns by border patrols in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants continue to cross the U.S.-Mexico border any way they can. Some die in the desert, others drown in the Rio Grande. But they continue to come, convinced that the rewards outweigh the risks.

"Once you run the gantlet at the border and live, [they think] we have a job waiting for you, you can get a driver's license, you can open a bank account," Camarota said.

Even though the United States has cracked down at border crossings, he said, U.S. officials fail to enforce the immigration laws once people make it across the border. "So we have a schizophrenic policy that is unfortunately luring people to their deaths," he said.