Published: 07.20.2007

A second mother dies crossing the border, leaving a young son
By Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Border Patrol agents found the body Thursday of a Guatemalan woman who died on the Tohono O'odham Reservation while trying to illegally enter the country with her 10-year-old son.
The latest discovery of a deceased illegal border crosser marked the second consecutive day that officials have found a mother dead and her young son nearby.
Thursday's discovery began when a Border Patrol agent spotted a 10-year-old Guatemalan boy walking about a half mile mile north of the border south of Tecolote Ranch, about 75 miles southwest of Tucson, said Jim Hawkins, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman.
The boy told the agent that his mother had died, Hawkins said. An agent of Borstar, the agency's search, trauma and rescue unit, backtracked the boy's path, finding the body at 10:55 a.m.
She was a woman of unknown age from Guatemala, the boy told the agent. The Guatemalan Consulate in Phoenix has been contacted.
On Wednesday at 2 a.m., 70 miles west of Tucson on the Tohono O'odham Nation one mile west of Big Field near Federal Route 24, the body of Maria Resendiz Perez, 33, of the central Mexican state of Queretaro, was found with four survivors, including her 10-year-old son.
The boy is in custody of the Mexican Consulate in Tucson, which is arranging for the boy to return to Mexico this weekend to be with his grandfather, said spokesman Alejandro Ramos Cardoso. They believe the mother died of dehydration.
The searing summer heat — Thursday was the 37th straight day of 100-degree temperatures in the Tucson area — has taken its toll on illegal entrants.
The Border Patrol has recovered at least 17 bodies in the Tucson Sector in July, bringing its fiscal-year total to at least 133. From Oct. 1 through June, the agency had reported 116 border deaths in the Tucson Sector, down slightly from the 119 at the same time the year before. The sector runs from New Mexico to the Yuma County line.
The number of border deaths is higher, according to records kept by the Pima and Cochise County medical examiners. Combined, those agencies have handled 180 bodies of illegal border crossers since Oct. 1.
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