When U.S. Immigration Policy Kills

Sixteen survivors, including four children, “were hot to the touch” and “suffering from heat stroke, heat exhaustion,” Mr. Hood said. Three perished after arriving at the hospital. The dead included migrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Both sides of the U.S. immigration debate are blaming the other for the tragedy, and they’re both right. The Biden Administration’s failure to enforce border security or to work with Republicans to reform U.S. asylum law encourages ever-more migrants to take their chances on the trek across the border. Border apprehensions are making new records and this fiscal year through May exceed 1.5 million.

Migrants figure that even if they’re caught they have a good chance of remaining in the U.S. The Administration might even fly them on one of its nighttime flights into the interior while they wait for an asylum hearing for which they may never appear. But this human traffic is now dominated by criminal cartels that have few scruples about who lives and who doesn’t.

Meanwhile, immigration restrictionists on the right and unions on the left oppose any kind of compromise that would allow more legal immigration to meet economic needs and reduce such smuggling. The migrants will keep coming as long as they think they can make a better life for themselves in the U.S.

As the party in power in Washington with the responsibility for immigration policy, the Biden Administration has the duty to fix this so migrants don’t have to play roulette with their lives. But as with so many other issues, this White House seems trapped by the demands of the political left to do little or nothing at the border. More human tragedies are inevitable.