LatinaLista — Today, Tyrone Williams was sentenced to life in prison for being the Grim Reaper to 19 undocumented immigrants who suffocated in the back of his 18-wheeler one hot, sweltering day while passing through Texas on the eve of summer in 2003.
Tyrone Williams led away from Houston courthouse to begin serving life sentence.
(Source: Houston Chronicle)
It’s reported that Williams was so frightened when he finally did stop and open the back of his truck and discovered the dead bodies that he did the most humanitarian act a man can do — he unhitched the trailer and left it there by the roadside as he tried to put as much distance
between himself and his victims.
His youngest victim was only 5 years old.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the last report we’ve had of undocumented immigrants dying
because their smugglers disregarded conditions and put their lives in danger on purpose.
Just this past week in Oklahoma in the early morning hours before dawn when most of the state was sleeping out another round of a fierce ice storm that had left the state a solid
skating rink, a minivan packed with undocumented immigrants was traveling from Arizona to North Carolina.
Not wanting to stop to wait out the storm, the driver made a bad decision and opted to risk
the lives of his passengers and himself and drive through the ice-hammered state.
It was the last bad decision he made. Most probably hitting what is called “black ice” on the highway, the minivan slid across the lanes and right into the front of, what else, a tractor-trailer.
The youngest victim yet known of the seven who were killed was 17 years old.
What’s left of a minivan smuggling undocumented immigrants across icy Oklahoma
(Source: newsok.com)
These two instances, and the hundreds of others that receive little attention or are never heard about, are reason enough for the government to enact a program that allows people to fill jobs that certain industries in our country need filled and want filled by immigrant labor.
I would like to think that we’ve learned a lot in how to implement a fair and reasonable worker program, since the last time such a program, like the braceros program, was implemented.
At the very least, we’ve learned how to be better watchdogs and hold companies and
business accountable for their actions and practices.
There will never be a perfect program, but any program that keeps people hungry for work from agreeing to be stuffed in the back of an 18-wheeler or riding in the dark on an icy highway, is one step closer to providing the kind of solution that —
Everyone can live with.
