EL PASO — With summer’s scorching heat and a rising tide of migrants headed to the U.S., authorities say there has been a sharp increase in the number of deaths among people crossing the border — including migrants lost in the desert or drowning in canals filled with water from the Rio Grande.
In fiscal 2020, which ended Sept. 30, Border Patrol agents discovered 250 bodies of migrants along the border. Through May of this fiscal year, 203 had been found already, with the hottest months still to come. The numbers do not include bodies found by other agencies, such as county sheriff’s departments.
U.S. and Mexican officials and immigrant rights advocates are bracing for a spike in rescues and deaths as the summer heat takes hold. The number of migrants rescued by the Border Patrol in fiscal 2021 is, so far, 6,898, well above the 5,071 for all of fiscal 2020.
To avoid the border fence in urban areas, unscrupulous smugglers are leading migrants through more remote and risky regions, such as the harsh desert outside El Paso, where there are fewer Border Patrol agents.
Unwitting migrants making the grueling trek in triple-digit heat with a limited food and water supply and no shelter have died within hours. And the death toll is expected to increase, according to experts.
“The border has been turned into a bottleneck,” said Ieva Jusionyte, a Brown University anthropologist and author of Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border. “You have asylum refugees waiting in camps, shelters. Families separated. Desperation has set in, all in this one area, and nothing has been resolved. So of course, you can expect injuries and deaths to go up.”
Last week, El Paso Border Patrol Sector Chief Gloria Chavez invited a group of journalists to walk a small distance up a hill that leads to Mount Cristo Rey, named for an enormous limestone Jesus on a cross towering over the border states Texas, New Mexico and Chihuahua, Mexico. She wanted reporters to experience firsthand the triple-digit temperatures that migrants face daily — too often with fatal consequences.
“Transnational organizations continue to recklessly disregard the lives of migrants they smuggle into the country,” Chavez said.
The rescues have included 186 special operations, agents said. Last week, pilots with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations in Culberson County, about two hours east of El Paso, made a harrowing rescue of an injured woman in a race against time in a rough, remote desert area. She was suffering from heat exhaustion and was unresponsive.
“Human-smuggling organizations continue to illegally push these vulnerable migrants across the border in the deserts and mountains of West Texas and New Mexico in 100-degree-plus weather, placing their lives in danger,” said John Stonehouse, director of Air and Marine Operations for CBP’s El Paso Branch. “They often abandon these people in remote areas without food or water. It demonstrates just how little concern these criminal organizations have for the safety and well-being of the people they exploit.”
Days earlier in Culberson County, Border Patrol agents found 33 migrants suffering from severe heat-related illness in a U-Haul truck in Van Horn. The agents and county sheriff’s deputies provided emergency assistance to the people, who had been locked inside the sweltering truck. Some of the migrants were taken to a hospital.
“This is happening at least — at least — once a day,” said Sheriff Oscar Carrillo. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
In Mexico, Pastor Rosalio Sosa, who heads a network of shelters along the border, said the situation is dire. “We’re getting four to five migrants per day in distress, dehydrated, near death,” he said.
While much of the U.S. focus on migration has been on unaccompanied children, the most recent CBP data shows that of 180,034 migrants encountered in May, the vast majority were single adults.
Most were expelled back to Mexico under Title 42, a public health provision invoked during the coronavirus pandemic that is meant to reduce the spread of COVID-19. It allows migrants to be quickly returned to Mexico.
But smugglers are now paid for multiple attempts to get their clients across the border: If migrants are rapidly kicked back into Mexico, many try again — up to five times, according to law enforcement agents and migrants.
“Normally, we’d see a drop of migrants coming in the summer because of heat and snakes,” Sosa said, “but the coyotes are working 365 days a year, 24-7.”
Jose Lopez, 24, is in a shelter in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He says he nearly died in the desert along the New Mexico-Texas line after crossing the border. “I ran out of water,” he said. “I was lucky that la migra [immigration authorities] found me. I wasn’t running away from them; I was running away from death.”
He was promptly returned to Mexico but said he would not go back to Guatemala. “I want to heal, regain my strength.” To return to Guatemala, Lopez added, is “a sure death sentence for me and my family.” The desert, he said, “offers me a chance.”
Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights and one of several immigrant advocates who met with Vice President Kamala Harris and her delegation during their visit to the border on Friday, called for an end to the Title 42 expulsions.
“We’re seeing a dramatic, horrific increase in the loss of human life,” he said. “We stressed the need to discontinue using Title 42. These strategies help seal the border, causing so many migrants to die in numbers that are alarming. This is not circumstantial. These are the policies of the United States that are essentially killing people.”
Marisa Limon Garza, deputy director of Hope Border Institute, also met with Harris and her delegation. She said, “I noted the lives lost to the heat during the meeting, paired with a call, echoed by many, to restore asylum with a plan in mind so people’s lives can be spared.”
The vice president is leading the national effort to reduce migration from Central America by tackling the root causes of migration. During a news conference in El Paso, Harris said: “Not only do we have a reason to concern ourselves with the cause issues because of what we see at the border, but also because we … live in the neighborhood, in the Western Hemisphere.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called for patience.
“Border surges have been a challenge for years and years,” he said, “and to address that challenge successfully requires a multi-part plan.”
“We have a plan,” he said, explaining the vice president’s efforts to tackle the root of the problem and his agency’s intention to “create a plan for a safe and legal pathway for people who qualify for humanitarian relief” and to “rebuild the country’s asylum system,” which was dismantled under the previous administration.
On the ground, law enforcement agents note that exploitation by smugglers knows no borders. Many smugglers are also exploiting the vulnerabilities of minors, using social media apps to offer U.S. teens easy money, up to $3,000, to help transport migrants once they sneak into the United States.
“Over the last several months, a lot of the drivers we’ve pulled over were 14 to 19 years old,” said Border Patrol Agent Jerry Galvan. “A lot of them from Sunland Park, El Paso, some from Las Cruces.”
Things are so bad in Sunland Park, N.M., across the state line from El Paso, that Fire Chief Daniel A. Medrano said he had retrofitted two city fire vehicles to assist in rescues.
“We’re looking at a long, hot summer,” said Medrano, whose station has been slammed with rescues and at least two deaths in recent days.
As the drama plays out this summer, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz called for understanding of a complex issue tainted by political rhetoric.
“We have to deal with them as human beings, away from the politics, and ask: ‘Why are they here? Who are these people who, in desperation, have fled their homes and traveled thousands of miles to risk their lives?’” he said. “We can’t just say, ‘You broke the law. Go back.’ We have to ask deeper, more complex questions. We are better than that.”
