Tim Z. Hernandez’s project reveals the longtime and continuing cruelty of US immigration policies at the border and of mass deportations. The twenty-eight deportees killed in the plane crash were among the estimated four hundred thousand deported mostly by trains in the preceding year. The US Justice Department took no responsibility for identifying the crash victims or compensating their families; rather, the department emitted a terse disclaimer: “No liability attaches to the government in connection with the Coalinga accident.”
