Border agents find 5 dead, rescue more than a dozen
4 bodies found around O'odham Reservation
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.27.2008
Five illegal immigrants were found dead Monday through Wednesday along Arizona's stretch of the U.S-Mexican border, the U.S. Border Patrol reported.
Border Patrol agents also carried out three notable rescues of illegal immigrants, including helping a woman six months pregnant who was dehydrated, said Rob Daniels, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman.
Four of the five bodies were found on the Tohono O'odham Reservation. Of the last 14 bodies recovered in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, 12 have been found on the reservation.
The reservation, which stretches across 75 miles of border and is comparable in size to the state of Connecticut, has been a particularly deadly area for illegal immigrants in the past decade and home to the deadliest corridor.
An 18-mile-wide corridor on the eastern part of the reservation, running from Mexico north through Sells and bordered on the east by the Baboquivari Mountains, claimed the lives of 229 border crossers from November 1999 through mid-November 2007, the Arizona Daily Star found in an analysis of 1,156 deaths recorded by the Border Patrol.
That's more than three times the average number of deaths in other segments of the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.
Most died of the heat.
Including Thursday, temperatures in Southern Arizona have hit or exceeded 100 degrees for 14 consecutive days, said Craig Shoemaker of the National Weather Service. It reached 107 degrees on Monday and Tuesday and 102 on Wednesday, weather service data show.
At least 19 illegal immigrants have been found dead in June, according to Border Patrol figures.
Two bodies were discovered Wednesday, one on Tuesday and two on Monday.
Wednesday
The discovery of a body in Cochise County began at approximately 4:45 p.m. when a 30-year-old man from Mexico City made a 911 call and told a dispatcher that he needed help, said Daniels, the Border Patrol spokesman.
Agents found him on Hereford Road, southeast of Sierra Vista about seven miles north of the border. He told them a smuggler had left him and his friend and gave them the cell phone to make the call.
The Border Patrol launched a search and found his friend dead nearby, Daniels said. The man was also 30 and from Mexico City, he said.
His friend said the two had traveled by bus from Mexico City to Hermosillo, Sonora, and crossed the border illegally east of the Naco port of entry on Tuesday with a group.
At some point, the smuggler left the two behind, they told agents.
The discovery of the other body found Wednesday also began with a person telling agents about somebody they knew being in distress, Daniels said. At about 8 a.m., a boy already in Border Patrol custody told agents that his uncle had been left behind south of Sells on the Tohono O'odham Reservation.
A search was launched and a crew aboard a Customs and Border Protection helicopter spotted a body one mile east of Federal Route 19 near the village of Topawa, Daniels said.
The deceased was a man from Mexico. His age and hometown were not available, Daniels said.
Tuesday
About 7:30 a.m., an agent on routine patrol came upon a body about four miles south of the village of Gunsight on the western edge of the Tohono O'odham Reservation, Daniels said. The body was in the early stages of decomposition, and it was unknown whether it was a man or a woman or where he or she was from, he said.
Monday
Border Patrol agents on patrol discovered the two bodies found Monday.
At 2:45 p.m., about 10 miles east of Sells on the O'odham Reservation, an agent found the body of a 17-year-old girl from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, Daniels said.
At 6:30 p.m., an agent found a body near the village of Queen's Well on the western side of the O'odham Reservation. It wasn't reported if it was a man or woman, Daniels said.
Rescues
The rescue of the pregnant woman occurred Wednesday at about 2:30 p.m. when agents found her on Arizona 86 near Sells, Daniels said. The 24-year-old woman was suffering from dehydration.
She was treated at the scene and then taken to the hospital in Sells for further evaluation, he said.
Also on Wednesday, agents responded to a pair of resident calls about illegal immigrants in distress near Amado, south of Tucson near Interstate 19, Daniels said. About 2:30 p.m., agents arrived to find a 36-year-old woman and her 16-year-old son, both from Puebla, Mexico.
She was semiconscious and suffering from dehydration. She was flown by helicopter to a Tucson hospital.
She was later released and reunited with her son. They were both returned to Mexico, Daniels said.
On Tuesday about 2 p.m., the agency was notified of a 911 call from a man who said he and a group of other illegal immigrants needed help. Agents in the area found the 14 illegal immigrants about six miles east of the village of Topawa.
They said the man who made the call was the guide, or smuggler, and that he fled after he called, Daniels said.
None of the illegal immigrants in the group, all from Mexico, needed to be taken to a hospital, he said.
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