Published: 09.29.2007

Tally of dead crossers goes up
By Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
COMING SUNDAY
Read a special report about one man's disappearance in the Arizona desert and the detective work by two nations to bring him home.
hundreds die crossing
The border death count jumped back up this fiscal year after a dip in 2006.
Border Patrol Tucson Sector
• 2005: 216
• 2006: 164
• 2007: 190*
*Through Sept. 16
Pima County, Cochise County medical examiner's offices
• 2005: 230
• 2006: 184
• 2007: 225*
*Through Sept. 27.
Note: Federal fiscal year runs Oct. 1- Sept. 30.
Source: Border Patrol, Pima and Cochise medical examiner's offices.
By every measure, fiscal year 2007 has been a near-record year for border deaths along Arizona's stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border.
The U.S. Border Patrol's tally for the Tucson Sector, 190, and the combined total handled by Pima and Cochise counties' medical examiners, 225, are both significant increases from 2006 and rank second to the record-setting 2005.
The figures prove that last year's dip in deaths — the first decrease after seven consecutive years of increases — offered false hope that the grim trend was headed down.
"I definitely thought we had reached the maximum number, the worst of the situation for the border crossers," said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. "But, it seems to have come back up, and I don't know what to expect next year."
Number has gone up
Parks' office has handled 204 bodies from Oct. 1 through Sept. 27, which surpasses the record 199 it handled during federal fiscal year 2005, and is nearly 19 percent more than the 2006 total of 171.
The Cochise County Office of the Medical Examiner has processed 21 bodies this fiscal year, an increase from 13 in 2006 but less than the 31 in 2005.
The 225 combined from the two counties — an area that roughly matches with the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector — is more than the 184 in 2006 but less than 230 in 2005.
The Border Patrol won't give out its final fiscal year numbers until next month, but from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 16, the agency had found 190 bodies. That figure is a 16 percent increase from 2006's total of 164. It is less than the record 216 found in 2005.
Some of the discrepancy in the agency's figures is rooted in its different internal methodology for identifying and tracking border deaths.
Any way you count them, there have been more than 1,100 since 2000.
In that time, the Border Patrol has found the bodies of 1,137 illegal border crossers in the Tucson Sector, agency figures show.
The numbers are worrisome to both immigrants' rights advocates and government officials.
"Who wouldn't be worried about that?" said Jesús Rod-riguez, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. "One is too many, period."
The agency has created a specially-trained search, trauma and rescue unit, Borstar, erected rescue beacons in the desert, and coordinated with the Mexican government to air public service announcements warning people of the dangers of crossing.
But to some, the agency shoulders the blame. The deaths began along the Southwest border after the Border Patrol increased its enforcement efforts, said Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Tucson-based Coalición de Derechos Humanos.
"It's really unconscionable, and I think that one day we will have to answer to international authorities and to the children of the migrant parents that died unnecessarily," Garcia said.
Deadly heat
The scorching summer heat played a major role in the increase in deaths, say Border Patrol officials and those who follow the trends.
There was a near-record setting 37-day stretch from June 13 to July 19 when temperatures exceeded 100 degrees every day, the third-longest streak in Tucson history, said Mic Sherwood, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The 65 days of 100-degree plus highs were 15 more than in summer 2006. And the average maximum temperature from June to August, 99.7 degrees, was a full degree higher than in 2006.
"That has a lot to do it with it right there," Rodriguez said. "The heat has a major effect on them when they are walking."
"It was hotter this year from July 1 forward than last year, and that led to more dangerous weather," said the Rev. Robin Hoover, the founder of Tucson-based Humane Borders, which has 87 water tanks in the desert.
His organization will hold its seventh-annual memorial this Sunday in Tucson to honor those who died this year.
Another reasons deaths have increased is that smugglers are taking groups on more remote routes every year, Hoover said.
GPS coordinates showed that bodies were found farther away from major roads again this year, Hoover said.
If that's the case, the smugglers are to blame, not the Border Patrol, Rodriguez said.
"We are not the ones taking them out there," Rodriguez said. "You can put that square on the smugglers' shoulders."
The smugglers are also to blame for increasingly giving illegal border crossers ephedrine pills and energy drinks that put them at risk of dehydration, Rodriguez said.
The agency also says that not all the bodies found in the last two years actually were people who died those years.
Of the 186 bodies found through August, 42 of them were skeletal remains, Rod-riguez said. Through the same time period in 2006, 36 of the 160 bodies found were skeletal remains.
Those increased numbers of skeletal remains contributed to Pima County's total surpassing the 2005 mark, a year when most of the bodies were found shortly after people died, said Parks. But the number of skeletal remains were comparable from 2006 to 2007, meaning this year's increased total still signals a true increase in people who died this year, he said.
The forecast for the new fiscal year isn't bright from Hoover or Garcia. The harsh truth is that extensive cross-border efforts haven't yet been able to slow the casualties that spiked to unheard of levels in 2000.
The Border Patrol has found more than 130 bodies for six years straight in the Tucson Sector.
With little hope for broad immigration reform this year, the dynamics that fuel illegal immigration remain largely the same, they say.
"There's no reason whatsoever to anticipate anything but worse conditions," Hoover said.
"I expect that will be there an increase in the deaths just as we have every year because we are further militarizing borders, and further pushing people into the most dangerous areas," Garcia.
The Border Patrol tries to stay hopeful, Rodriguez said.
"Hopefully, there are less, a lot less, hopefully not one," said Rodriguez, about the new year. "That's the utopian thought, that, hopefully, there is not one you find.
"All you can do is make every effort to get the word out to people in Mexico and Central America that these are the dangers out there," he said. "Hopefully, people will take it to heart."
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/203647