Crossing the Border • Charles D. Thompson, Jr.

A: Risks, Reports on crossing death counts

Crossing the Sonoran Desert from Mexico into Arizona is one of the most dangerous and treacherous journeys on earth. Yet it is one of the most traveled sections of the border due to the construction of fences elsewhere. Besides enormous financial cost and the threat of being robbed, border crossers must endure blazing heat during the day, and frigid desert cold at night, as well as risks of dehydration, poisonous snakes, and other dangerous animals. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to risk this perilous journey because they are desperate to find work and economic opportunity for themselves and their families.

Border Crossing Deaths
Hundreds of men, women, and children die every year attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border. In Pima County, Arizona, the area that records the greatest number of deaths of undocumented border crossers, 927 migrant deaths were recorded from 1995-2005 by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office (PCMEO). A report by the Binational Migration Institute (BMI) of the University of Arizona’s Mexican American Studies and Research Center found that since the late 1990s there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of border-crossing deaths each year along this border.

• The October 2006 report is available here.

The Immigration Policy Center reported in February 2007 that the bodies of between 2,000 and 3,000 men, women, and children have been found along the entire southwest border since 1995. The report states that, “Experts, including the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), now explain this crisis as a direct consequence of U.S. immigration-control policies instituted in the mid-1990s.”
Source: immigration.server263.com/index.php?content=B070201

The actual number of border-crossing deaths is likely much higher than reported because the estimate does not include missing migrant bodies that have never been found or recovered. Even so, recorded deaths continue to rise. Within the study’s timeframe, more recent years accounted for a higher percentage of deaths than earlier years. For example, from October 2004-October 2005, the Border Patrol reported 460 migrant deaths along the border, accounting for nearly 1/6 of the deaths in the last decade within a single 12-month period. Over 350 people died there in 2008.

To put this death count into perspective, between 1995 and 2004 the U.S./Mexico border saw 10 times the number of deaths compared to those associated with the Berlin Wall in Germany during its 28-year existence.

Heat-related illnesses from desert conditions account for over half of the total border crossing fatalities. Automobile accidents and drownings also account for a large portion of the deaths.

Reports indicate that indigenous people are the most vulnerable migrants because many do not speak Spanish and lack connections to the more widely used migrating networks.

The age demographic of border-crossing fatalities makes these numbers even more tragic. Over 80 percent of the unauthorized border-crosser deaths handled by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office are people under the age of 40, and there is a discernable, upward trend in the number of dead youth under the age of 18.

Posted with permission by www.humaneborders.org

Source: www.humaneborders.org/news/images/migrantdeaths_0004.jpg

The significant increase in border-crosser deaths since 1995 is attributed, at least in part, to U.S. government policies beginning in 1994 to increase Border Patrol presence and deter immigrant crossings. In the mid-90s, the U.S. began to implement new and more aggressive immigration control approaches. The goal was to deter border-crossers from undertaking the journey by making it more difficult. The first of these was termed “Operation Gatekeeper.” Its work focused on strengthening Border Patrol south of San Diego and pushing immigrants East. Similar measures continued to be implemented through the second half of the 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century. These strategies included sealing off major urban entry points in Texas and California, and increasing border-enforcement expenditures by a factor of 5 with barriers, surveillance, and Border Patrol agents.

Even with a highly fortified effort to protect the border and deter unauthorized immigrants, the numbers of border-crossers has increased, rather than decreased, since the 1990s.
Rather than reducing migrant traffic, this deterrence strategy has resulted in the funneling of border-crossers through some of the most difficult and dangerous stretches of the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona. The inhospitable terrain has resulted in significantly increased deaths among border-crossers. During the “pre-funnel effect” years studied in the BMI report (1990-1999), the Pima county Medical Examiner’s Office (PCMEO) reported deaths of an average 14 border crossers each year. In stark contrast, between the years 2000 and 2005, authorities reported an average of 160 recovered bodies per year – a more than 1000% increase in border-crosser deaths.

The Binational Migration Institute (BMI) concluded that the funneling of migrants into the most dangerous parts of the Sonoran desert was the primary structural cause of death for thousands of unauthorized border crossers.
immigration.server263.com/index.php?content=B070201

Immigration in the Global Economic Crisis
Due to of the global economic crisis, the number of reported border crossings fell, at least temporarily, in 2009. An analysis of census data from both U.S. and Mexican governments released by the Pew Hispanic Center in July 2009 found that immigration from Mexico between March 2008 and March 2009 fell by nearly 60% from the previous year.
Read the full report here.

Migrants who have chosen to return home to wait out the economic downturn say this is a temporary measure. As soon as day jobs return, many are likely to try to enter the U.S. again, especially because their loans taken out for their original trips remain unpaid. With the Latin American economy also in recession, the work of repaying these loans is even harder in Latin America than in the United States.

C: Take Action! Links to Humanitarian Organizations for safe border crossing

The following organizations take humanitarian action to help border crossers. Visit the websites below to find out more about the work of these organizations, and how you can become involved.