Mexico president says Baltimore bridge collapse shows migrants ‘do not deserve to be treated as they are’
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Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore shows that “migrants go out and do risky jobs at midnight” and as a result they “do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive, irresponsible politicians in the United States.”
López Obrador made the remark as Maryland State Police identified one of the two bodies removed from the Patapsco River on Wednesday as 35-year-old Alejandro Hernández Fuentes, originally from Mexico.
“Based upon the conditions, we’re now moving from a recovery mode to a salvage operation because of the superstructure surrounding what we believe are the vehicles and the amount of concrete and debris; divers are no longer able to safely navigate or operate around that in the areas around this wreckage,” Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of Maryland State Police, said during a press conference Wednesday night.
Guatemalan Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, was identified by Butler as the other body removed from the water. Divers had found a red pickup truck submerged under approximately 25 feet of water in the middle span of the bridge and discovered the two bodies trapped inside.
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The wreckage of Francis Scott Key Bridge as seen from Dundalk, Maryland, on Wednesday, March 27. (AP/Matt Rourke)
Four other construction workers are presumed dead following Tuesday’s disaster, in which the cargo ship Dali slammed into one of the bridge’s pillars in the early morning hours, causing the span to collapse. They are also from Guatemala and El Salvador.
Another victim has been identified as 38-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, who was the youngest of eight siblings from Azacualpa, a rural mountainous area in northwestern Honduras, according to The Associated Press.
Sandoval left Honduras for the U.S. 18 years ago and entered the country illegally before settling in Maryland and doing any work he could find, including construction and clearing brush, according to the news agency. He then started a package delivery business in the Baltimore-Washington area, his brother Martín Suazo Sandoval said.
