Arizona law, heat don't stop border crossings

12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Amanda Lee Myers and Julie Watson, The Associated Press

Caption under Picture: A group of illegal immigrants waits to be deported to Mexico from Nogales, Ariz. Border crossers say the chance to make money is worth the risks of death or capture.

NOGALES, Mexico – Hector Ortega stumbled across the body of a fellow migrant as he walked across Arizona's harsh desert in the searing summer heat. He tried not to look too closely.

With nothing to be done for the deceased, Ortega and the others trudged on, guided by a smuggler across the U.S. border, determined to complete their illegal odyssey even as they endured record-high temperatures and fever-pitch resentment.

"What can you do about it in the desert?" he asked.

Deaths of illegal immigrants in Arizona soared this summer toward their highest levels since 2005 – a fact that has surprised many who thought the furor over the state's new immigration law and the 100-plus degree heat would send them elsewhere along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

But at the Pima County morgue in Tucson, the body bags are stacked on stainless steel shelves from floor to ceiling.

In July, 59 people died – 40 in the first two weeks, when nighttime temperatures were the hottest in recorded history, hovering around the low 90s. The single-month death count is second only to July 2005, when 68 bodies were found.

Eighteen more people died in the first 23 days of August.

Even with the prospect of a torturous death and the bitter wrath they face in Arizona, immigrants, including Ortega, say the state's vast, sparsely populated terrain is still the best place for border jumpers.

"In Tijuana, you have two walls that you have to get over," said Ortega, 64, a farm laborer who first came across in 1976 to work in West Coast fields.

He admits he's afraid when he crosses but states flatly, "It's worth the risk."

After two days of traversing the desert, he and his group were caught by U.S. Border Patrol agents when they reached a freeway and their ride wasn't there.

Resting at a shelter for failed border crossers that sits atop a steep hill in Mexico overlooking the city of Nogales, Ortega expanded on his motives. "It's the only way to make a little money to support my family," he said.

Most of those who trickled into the shelter planned to try again, shrugging off Arizona's new law giving local authorities the power to arrest them, currently stayed by a federal court order. They are also unfazed by the Mexican government's warning to its citizens to avoid the state.

Sofia Gomez of an aid group called Humane Borders said crossers are traveling through even more remote areas than in previous years.

At the same time, anger over illegal immigration has led to people shooting up the water stations her group has placed in the desert.
"They're taking a higher risk and they're not making it," Gomez said.

So far this year, the death toll for crossers is 171, the same number the Pima County medical examiner's office had seen at this time in 2007, the year the office saw a record 217 deaths.

"We thought the political climate in Arizona would be a significant deterrent to people crossing, but as far as the deaths are concerned, they certainly have been what looks like is going to be the highest they've ever been," said Dr. Eric Peters at the morgue.

Amanda Lee Myers and Julie Watson,
The Associated Press


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