Number Of Mexican Migrant Deaths Reach Record Number In '07
Number Of Mexican Migrant Deaths Along Border To Reach Record Numbers in 2007, Says Mexican Official
Jessica Pupovac - AHN News Writer
Mexico City, Mexico (AHN)
Nearly 500 Mexicans have died along the U.S.-Mexico border so far in 2007, a Mexican official said Monday, making it the "largest migrant cemetery in the world."
The number does not include migrants from other Latin American countries.
The deputy of Mexico's Secretary of the Commission of Population, Border and Immigration Issues, Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, said that on October 30, the number of Mexican deaths had already reached 470. This makes it highly likely that this year's casualties will surpass those in 2006, which were just over 500. In 2005, approximately 375 Mexican migrants died along the border.
Seventy percent of the deaths were of people between 15 and 29 years of age.
"On average 1.5 Mexicans die every day, just for trying to cross the border," and "chasing the American dream," the federal lawmaker fired, adding that the figure does not include the dozens of migrants who are unidentified or whose bodies are not recovered in the rivers and deserts along the border.
He added that thirty percent of the cadavers recovered in the state of Arizona have not yet been identified, meaning that the total number of Mexican deaths could be much higher. One-third of those unidentified migrants were women, he added, making 2007 "the most black in the history of undocumented migration."
U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson Andrea Zortman told AHN that they registered 400 immigrant deaths slong the border in fiscal year 2007, which ended September 30. That number includes migrants of all nationalities.
The Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition, however, claims that number to be much higher. According to their calculations, over the past decade, 5,000 men, women and children of various nationalities have died trying in the region, as they attempted, and failed, to start new lives in the United States.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009072172
