Thread: Patrol Increases Count of Migrant Deaths

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php? ... rderpatrol

Saturday, June 25, 2005
Patrol increases count of migrant deaths

It says additional numbers from medical examiners will make the tally more accurate.

CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen

The U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector says it will add 21 illegal migrant deaths to its count this year after reviewing medical examiners' records.
That brings the total known deaths to 100, a 27 percent increase.

The new count will give a more accurate picture of how many illegal migrants are dying and where and help the Border Patrol save lives, Tucson sector Border Patrol Chief Michael Nicley said.

"If we're going to track things like the number of deaths related to the border environment down here, I think those numbers need to be accurate," he said yesterday.

Nicley said the Border Patrol will be in weekly contact with medical examiners' offices for Pima and Cochise counties to ensure the accuracy of future figures.

The announcement comes three weeks after a Tucson Citizen article in which medical examiners said the Border Patrol had not asked them whether they had recorded any migrant deaths it may have missed.

For the past two years, local newspapers have documented the discrepancy between medical examiner and Border Patrol figures. Last year, medical examiners throughout southern Arizona counted 221 deaths, while the Border Patrol showed 172.

The revised figure is still lower than the medical examiners' reported 111 deaths since Oct. 1, the start of the Border Patrol's fiscal year. Nicley said some deaths were excluded because they did not fit the Border Patrol's profile of migrant deaths.

The Border Patrol began counting illegal migrant deaths in 1998 as part of its Border Safety Initiative.

Gloria Chavez, who heads the initiative, said in an earlier interview that Border Patrol sectors are supposed to contact medical examiners' offices to see if they have any deaths from other law enforcement agencies. In practice, the Border Patrol has counted only incidents involving its officers.

Claudia Smith, a lawyer with the social justice group California Rural Assistance League, has criticized the undercount for years.

She gives Nicley credit for a good start but said the Border Patrol needs to do much more.

"We're entitled to know the true monetary and human cost of this wholly ineffectively, 10-year strategy," Smith said.

She wants the Border Patrol to count all deaths sector by sector dating from the mid-1990s, when its crackdown in urban areas began funneling illegal migrants into more remote and deadly areas.

Nicley does not plan to recount previous years.

"I don't know what purpose that would serve to go back in terms of our operations and what we need to be doing here," he said.

Smith said the Border Patrol also needs to broaden its count to include bodies that wash up on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River and those found outside the immediate border counties, including the 19 migrants who suffocated in a truck about 200 miles north of the border in Victory, Texas, in 2003.

Border Safety Initiative spokesman Sal Zamora said the agency was concerned that the Tucson sector had not been in regular contact with the medical examiners.

But "we are not concerned that other sectors are not in compliance," he said.

Claudia Smith, a lawyer with the social justice group California Rural Assistance League, has criticized the undercount for years.
"We're entitled to know the true monetary and human cost of this wholly ineffectively, 10-year strategy," Smith said.

It is not the fault of the Border Patrol if morons are trying to sneak into the US through the desert.

If Ms. Smith had any common sense, she would advise against trying to cross the desert--not blame the Border Patrol. It isn't THEIR fault if YOU are stupid.

If you don't belong in this country STAY OUT.

"We're entitled to know the true monetary and human cost of this wholly ineffectively, 10-year strategy," Smith said.

Ms. Smith seems to be forgeting the true monetary and human cost north of the border. Take off your blinders lady!

Take off your blinders lady!

I don't think she can. Her head is too far in.