To the migrants who died in Texas, Biden is no different to Trump on immigration | Maeve Higgins

They were killed by this nation's migration policies, our exclusionary laws, and our obsession with the closing southern border

More than 50 men and women - the current count is 51, but it may well climb - were killed on Monday. They died trapped in a tractor-trailer rig and abandoned on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, in 100F (38C) heat. More than a dozen are in hospital, including children. The dead were migrants from Mexico and Central America. The local fire chief, Charles Hood, said the people in the truck were hot to the touch" and that they had no water and no air conditioning inside the truck.

That is how they died, but that is not why they died. They died because they had no safe route into the United States. And why is that? It is because of border controls and deadly, racist migration policies created and upheld by our government, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Maeve Higgins is a Guardian US columnist