Undocumented Man Dies Saving Lives In Houston

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Two days before the administration of President Donald Trump announced the end of the program that protected young dreamers from deportation, Alonso Guillén's relatives managed to rescue his corpse from the murky waters that still cover much of Houston.

The 31-year-old undocumented youth had disappeared last Wednesday when the boat with which they were rescuing victims of the floods caused by Hurricane Harvey collided with a pillar of an I-45 highway bridge and overturned, according to the Houston Chronicle..

That was the tragic outcome that his father, Jesús Guillén, feared when he advised him not to join the expedition with his friends from Lufkin, Tx, when he told him that he wanted to go to the disaster area to lend a hand. He told him it was very risky, but Alonso replied that he couldn't keep his hands crossed with everything that was happening.

"He died serving others," one of the victim's brothers, who is also called Jesús Guillén, told The Washington Post on Tuesday. "He could have been watching what was happening on television, but he preferred to help."

Alonso had been born in the Mexican city of Piedras Negras and moved to Lufkin with his family when he was a teenager. He was currently working as an announcer at a radio station, a job he abandoned on August 29 to join a group of volunteer rescuers.

With a borrowed boat, they arrived in Spring, a suburb of Houston, where they immediately deployed to help victims trapped in their home. It was on one of those missions, when they were going to an apartment complex, that the accident occurred.

Three men fell into the water. One was able to grab onto a tree, from which he was rescued. Guillén and his friend, Tomás Correón, were swept away by the current and disappeared.

Correón's body was recovered last Friday. Alonso's family had to wait until Sunday to confirm their worst fears.

According to his relatives, the young Mexican American was one of the more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants benefited from the DACA program implemented by President Barack Obama to protect undocumented immigrants who entered the country when they were minors, who are colloquially known as dreamers.

Just this Tuesday, as Alonso's family members prepare for his funeral, the United States Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced President Trump's decision to end DACA and give Congress 6 months to find an alternative.