The death toll after a semitruck was found abandoned in the outskirts of San Antonio has risen to 53 people, largely migrants from Mexico and some from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Officials say it’s likely the deadliest smuggling incident in modern U.S. history. Activists and some lawmakers say it’s also a symptom of U.S. border policies. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was quick to say the tragedy was the result of the Biden administration’s "deadly open border policies."

But Dora Rodriguez, an aid worker in Arizona, says the border is more closed than ever. Title 42 blocks asylum at the border because of the pandemic and the Migrant Protections Protocols have forced tens of thousands of asylum seekers to await U.S. immigration hearings in Mexico.

Both are key Trump-era immigration measures still in place under Biden. They’re the latest of many deterrence policies enacted over the last few decades. 

"We invested billions of dollars to bring all this surveillance, all this equipment, all this manpower, but it’s not stopping immigration," she said. "This should be a wake-up call that this is not going to stop, so we should try to humanize these policies."

But instead, Rodriguez says people are forced to make impossible choices. She almost died crossing the Arizona desert herself years ago, seeking asylum from the civil war in her native El Salvador. Now as an aid worker, she says she sees migrants who have waited for months to claim asylum, and families forced to separate under Title 42.

"They (lawmakers) blame the smugglers immediately, and I say yes, but we are also giving them business, by returning these people with no due process, no rights, no nothing," she said. 

In a statement following the truck's discovery, southern Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva said the tragedy was a "blatant reminder of the continued cost of militarized borders and xenophobic policies." He called on lawmakers to pass immigration reform.