A horrendous crash on Sunday led to the deaths of 14 people in Texas. The truck, when it crashed, was carrying 23 people, far too many for a one door pick-up truck. Not only were there quite a few people packed into the cab, but there was also a significant, though currently unknown, number of people riding in the truck bed.
Authorities discovered that all of the passengers were undocumented immigrants. Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security which handles investigations related to immigration, expressed its regret for the accident. Quoted by the New York Times one official said that the deaths were entirely unnecessary.
Currently it is unclear as to why there were so many people jammed into this particular vehicle or what their motivations were.
Apparently, fatal accidents involving many immigrants at once are not uncommon in this region of Texas.
It is all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking of members of the bureaucracy or the DHS are only a set of three capitalized letters, a badge, a uniform, a scowl. But we are all human, and when confronted with such a monstrous disaster it is impossible to not feel pangs of deep sorrow.
Indeed, no one needs to die like that.