Can you figure out what this police x-ray captured?

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At first it looks like a piece of abstract art. Then you start to make out human shapes. And it looks like a bunch of people wearing bathing suits and swim caps, maybe? But it’s not. This is a police X-ray image of a trailer truck containing 94 trafficking victims from Central America, Nepal and Bengladesh. The truck, which had started its trip in Guatemala and was headed towards towards the U.S. border, but was stopped at a checkpoint outside of Tixtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas State.

According to the Mexican National Migration Institute, or INM, 78 women and 16 men 78 men and 16 women were found in the truck. Of the 94, there were nine men and a woman from Nepal; nine men from Bangladesh; 37 men and eight women from Guatemala; 20 men and three women from El Salvador; and four women and three men from Honduras. According to the INM, all 94 were described as having “severe lesions on their hands and legs, as well as symptoms of suffocation.” Two of them received first aid and all of them were given food and water. The driver was arrested for trafficking. The fate of the people being trafficked, however, remains unclear. They have been detained. And, sadly, they will most likely be deported.

 

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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