San Antonio Fox affiliate KABB ran disturbing footage last Thursday of migrants drowning as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande.
Jesus Vargas, a fisherman who captured the incident on his cell phone, told authorities he saw three people — two teenagers and a woman — in the water near the Texas border town of Laredo, with only their heads bobbing above the surface. “You don’t have life jackets, nothing? They’re drowning, these guys!” Vargas can be heard shouting to U.S. Border Patrol agents standing nearby. He used his fishing rod to save one boy, who is about 13, but he claims three others drowned as he looked on.
The incident occurred following Border Patrol agents foiling of a human smuggling attempt, prompting migrants who hadn’t been detained to attempt to swim to safety.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Since Vargas posted his footage on social media, he has received calls from families all over Central America asking for descriptions of those who drowned in attempts to determine whether they were relatives.
Tragedies like this have occurred before. Who can forget the heart-rending photo of a dead child with her arm draped over her father’s corpse when the pair drowned under similar circumstances in June of 2019? The photo, which went viral, was exploited at the time by Democratic presidential wannabe Beto O’Rourke, who blamed then-President Donald Trump directly for the deaths:
Trump is responsible for these deaths. https://t.co/UZirFjh3fm
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) June 26, 2019
Here’s another tweet from another presidential candidate of the day:
This image is gut-wrenching. The cruelty we’re seeing at our border is unconscionable. History will judge how we respond to the Trump Administration’s treatment of immigrant families & children—we can’t be silent. This isn’t who we are. This is not America.
This image is gut-wrenching. The cruelty we're seeing at our border is unconscionable. History will judge how we respond to the Trump Administration’s treatment of immigrant families & children—we can’t be silent. This isn't who we are. This is not America.https://t.co/ZeMBmwUHxU
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 26, 2019
The question that arises is whether Biden plans now to take blame publicly for the drowning deaths that took place on his own watch last week. Following yesterday’s release of photos by Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar showing the abominable conditions at migrant border facilities, Biden can no longer hide behind the lie that he is treating these people any more humanely than Trump did.
