by Jacob G. Hornberger

May 15, 2026

The U.S. immigration-control death machine has struck again. A few days ago, six bodies were found inside a railroad container car in my hometown of Laredo, Texas. There was no way to open the door to the container car from inside. The victims died of dehydration and extreme heat. At least one of them was from Mexico and authorities are working to identify the other five. It is a virtual certainty that they were all illegal immigrants.

Of course, we’ve seen this picture before, albeit in different forms. For decades, illegal immigrants have died of thirst and dehydration crossing the desert in Arizona and New Mexico. Others have been raped and killed at the hands of kidnappers or traffickers. Some have died from drowning while swimming across the Rio Grande. Some have died in the backs of tractor-trailers. Some have died from a bullet shot by a Border Patrol agent or a U.S. soldier.

Death has always been a central feature of America’s immigration-control system. Death has become normalized. Sure, there will be the standard laments about this tragic occurrence, there will be the standard condemnations of the immigrants themselves for violating U.S. immigration laws, and there will be the standard diatribes against human traffickers who prey on people who are simply trying to survive or improve their lives through labor.

But the fact remains: Death has long been an inherent part of America’s immigration-control system. In the absence of that system, all those victims would still be alive. That’s because they would be free to cross the border and enter the United States like normal human beings rather than like animals. They’d walk across an international bridge that connects Nuevo Laredo and Laredo. Or they’d drive across the bridge. Or they’d take a taxi or a bus. They wouldn’t be swimming across the Rio Grande or hiding inside a railroad container car or the back of a tractor trailer. They wouldn’t be crossing a lonely desert. They wouldn’t be subject to being raped and killed by some human trafficker. All this death and suffering is part and parcel of America’s immigration-control system.

As I have repeatedly emphasized ever since I founded The Future of Freedom Foundation 36 years ago, there is one — and only one — solution to the immigration crisis that has besieged our nation our entire lives. That solution is open borders. We set forth the case for open borders back in 1995 in our book The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration, edited by Richard Ebeling and me, which was a collection of timeless essays addressing the solution to America’s decades-old, ongoing, never-ending, perpetual immigration crisis. More recently, we set forth the solution again this year in my book The Case for Open Borders: An Introduction. In between those two books are countless essays, speeches, podcasts, and conferences, which can be found on our website at fff.org.

Unless the situation in the United States becomes so tyrannical and unattractive that no one wants to move here anymore (and in which many Americans are trying to get out), there will always be people trying to come to the United States in order to save or better their lives. As the U.S. Declaration of Independence points out, the pursuit of happiness is a natural, God-given right that adheres to everyone in the world, not just to American citizens. No government, including the U.S. government, wields the legitimate authority to infringe or destroy natural, God-given rights that preexist government.

Yet, that is precisely what the U.S. government has done with its socialist immigration-control system. It’s a socialist system because it is based on the core principle of socialism — central planning. Rather than rely on the principles of the free market — which include the natural law of supply and demand with respect to labor — the government plans, in a top-down, command-and-control manner, the movements of millions of people in one of the most complex, constantly shifting labor markets in history.

It cannot be done, at least not without what the economist Ludwig von Mises called “planned chaos.” What a perfect term to describe the decades-old system along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Frustrated that their socialist system has never worked, U.S. officials, over the decades, have erected a massive immigration police state, which has destroyed the rights and liberties of people along the border. This police state is now being expanded nationwide and, in the process, bringing more death with it, including of American citizens.

Maybe — just maybe — the deaths of those six people inside that railroad car will cause more Americans, especially ones who go to church every Sunday, to do some serious soul-searching as to where we are as a nation, how we got here, and what we need to do to get our nation back on the right track — toward life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, prosperity, morality, and harmony with the people of the world. Bringing an end to America’s socialist immigration-control system and restoring a free-market immigration system would be a great place to start.