ICE's Roundup Of Workers Has a Tragically Growing Body Count

Curo Churata stopped at Home Depot ahead of going to work on June 27 th. The decision proved deadly.

Such is life for illegal immigrants nowadays. Since work is presently criminalized for those not “invited” or “approved” by the central planners who’ve arrogated to themselves the power to choose human capital, market signals must be handled in the shadows as it were.

Which on its own is a rejection of the two most popular arguments against immigrants: they’re coming here for welfare, and supposedly worse, they’re importing alien cultures that will sap the genius of the one we already have. Let’s address the second objection first.

Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane used to say that humans who risked it all – including their lives – to get to the United States should be made citizens upon arrival. By loving themselves and their families enough to get to the very country that has been the antidote to statism and its attendant poverty for centuries, they had revealed themselves as thoroughly American.

Next, consider the sacrifices these people routinely make to get to the United States not for splendor, but for the most difficult kinds of work available. Churata instructs here: he was once again stopping at Home Depot before work. The stop didn’t signal him heading to an air-conditioned office or work space, rather it signaled him toiling in oppressive heat to help build what would eventually cocoon the natives in air-conditioned home or office comfort.

This embrace of the worst kind of work for something better stamps immigrants not just as American, but Americans of the ideal kind. As in they’re Americans who embrace the most brutal sorts of work as sustenance for them and their families, and better future work for offspring fortunate enough to grow up in the richest, most opportunity-laden country in the world. Immigrants don’t sap American culture, rather they renew it.

Which brings us to the welfare angle. About the latter, give ICE workers this: they know where to find the illegals. Truth in stereotypes? They match with empirical realities. See remittances. Over $60 billion was sent back to Mexico in just the past year. The number would have been higher, but for the sad reality that work nowadays is a potential death sentence.

Back to Churata who once again died because he went to work, he left behind a wife and three children. After being taken in by ICE, he was sent to Richwood Detention Center in Louisiana. The Washington Post’s Liam Bowman reports that for three months he called or messaged his wife and children every day that he was okay. Imagine their agony, imagine their poverty without Churata working, but they not unreasonably figured he would return. This is America, isn’t it?

So, while the health problems visited upon Churata remain a bit vague, Bowman indicates that “medical distress” led to the need for Churata’s hospitalization. Luckily Richwood was near a hospital (a 7-minute drive), but the authorities took hours to get Churata checked in. He died.

Yes, ICE isn’t just entering private businesses to arrest hard workers, it’s killing them. To which some will say “anecdote,” “anecdote.” True, but add enough anecdote and soon enough you have a statistic. Bowman reports that 59 have died in ICE custody since Donald Trump returned to office.

Think about that. 59 humans healthy enough to work are now dead. Would it that conservatives who rightly value unborn life might care about the adult living, and who are leaving behind living wives and children to the growing vagaries of the Shining City on the Hill.

Originally published on Real Clear Markets.