Thread: 'Recipe for death': Record temps, policies contribute to recent string of migrant dea

'Recipe for death': Record temps, policies contribute to recent string of migrant deaths



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José Ignacio Castañeda Perez, Arizona Republic
Thu, July 13, 2023 at 9:01 AM EDT




A 9-year-old migrant boy died last month from heat-related complications in Mesa after crossing the Arizona-Mexico border with his family.

The boy died June 17 from environmental heat exposure and hyperthermia, which is when the body overheats, according to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office. The boy began experiencing seizures and was diagnosed with multi-organ failure following the hours-long trek in the scorching southern Arizona desert.
The boy’s death is not an isolated incident.

While migrant deaths in the desert receive increased attention in the summer months, it’s a lethal issue that’s been raging for decades.

Over the past 20 years, the southern Arizona desert has claimed the lives of thousands of migrants. Rising temperatures due to climate change are only expected to exacerbate the situation.

Heat and rising temperatures play a role in the number of migrant deaths, but researchers say those are only a couple of factors that play into the overall trends.

The required physical exertion that migrants must undergo because of U.S.
immigration policy changes also contributes to the number of heat-related migrant deaths.

Alvaro Enciso, part of the Tucson Samaritans volunteer group, pauses as he and a group of other volunteers place a new cross at the site of the migrant who died in the desert some time ago, on Tuesday, May 18, 2021, in the desert near Three Points, Ariz.

Deterrence policies and physical infrastructure, such as walls or barriers, will not stop people from trying to make the journey to the U.S., said Brad Jones, professor of political science with the University of California, Davis, and a volunteer with the Tucson-based nonprofit Humane Borders.

Migrants will continue to feel compelled to make the journey as long as push factors in their home countries remain the same, Jones said. But the policies and barriers will force them to take more treacherous routes.

“That's just a recipe for death,” Jones said. “It's just going to make the journey that much more difficult.”

Advocates have described tragic pattern as a “slow-motion genocide.”

At least 53 migrant human remains have been found in Arizona so far this year, according to the Arizona OpenGIS Initiative, a collaboration between the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner and the nonprofit Humane Borders.

In 2022, 174 remains were recovered and in 2021 225 were found.

'A slow-motion genocide': Arizona-based group and their 2-year search for migrant remains

Over the span of one July weekend, 10 people died because of the lethal heat and conditions across the southern border, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens tweeted on July 10. Forty-five others were rescued during that same weekend, he wrote.

Previously, 13 dead migrants were recovered by Border Patrol in just one week, Owens tweeted July 5. The agency documented 226 heat-related rescues that week.

“USBP continues to see dehydration as the leading cause of the rescues & the deaths we encounter,” Owens wrote on Twitter. “Extreme temperatures are a serious concern, especially during summer months.”

A new cross is placed by the Tucson Samaritans volunteer group at the site of the migrant who died in the desert some time ago, Tuesday, May 18, 2021, in the desert near Three Points, Ariz.

As of June 29, Border Patrol agents have discovered 103 migrants dead from heat exposure and documented 5,091 heat-related rescues so far in 2023, former Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said.

“The thing that keeps me awake at night is thinking about all of those who have died who have never been found, of which there must be thousands,” Jones said.

Arizona heat wave: Is this the worst heat wave ever in Phoenix? What to know
The recent string of migrant deaths comes during a wave of record breaking heat across Arizona, with Tucson on July 9 logging an record setting excessive heat warning that lasted nearly seven days. The heat wave that’s scorching Arizona and the Southwest could register as the worst on record.

“We do know that there's a very, very intimate connection between the climate, weather conditions, ambient conditions and the chances of death,” Jones said.

Bruce Anderson, a forensic anthropologist for the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, examines the remains of a male between the ages of 18 and 40, found June 5, 2010, on the Tohono O'odham Reservation in southern Arizona. Anderson was almost certain the remains belonged to an undocumented border crosser who died between one and two years earlier.

June and July are historically the months when the highest number of recoveries are documented on average, per the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner.

Paige Corich-Kleim, a volunteer with the Tucson-based humanitarian organization No More Deaths, said the group has seen an uptick in the number of migrant remains recovered. The group recently documented five recoveries within the corridors they work in near Ajo and Arivaca, Corich-Kleim said.

No More Deaths volunteers discovered the remains of a migrant on July 9 and notified the person's family.

“Those are just the known deaths and there's so many more people that are disappeared by the desert and are never found,” Corich-Kleim said.

The increase in recoveries has been happening for the past couple years, Corich-Kleim added.

The number of migrant remains found annually is documented by the dates they were discovered, which could be days, weeks, months or years after the day the person died.

The number is adjusted to reflect remains that are found months or years apart that are later identified to be from the same person, according to the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner.

Increased border enforcement and policy changes "likely contributed" to the number of recovered migrant remains during the past 20 years, given that migrants increasingly are crossing the border through more remote and dangerous areas in order to avoid detection, according to a 2021 report by the University of Arizona's Binational Migration Institute.

Those trends can be traced back to the 1990s when the Border Patrol first implemented its “prevention through deterrence” policies. The policies were meant to push undocumented migrants to cross the border through more remote and dangerous areas instead of urban hubs like Tijuana-San Diego and Juarez-El Paso.

“What happens with hyper-enforcement is that asylum seekers or migrants are simply going to take greater risks and by greater risks, that means entering in more inhospitable areas,” Jones said.

Agents from the Yuma and Tucson Sectors located three men at Growler Valley on May 21, 2020. They had been in the desert for a week and had run out of water two days prior, according to the Border Patrol.

The Border Patrol believed they would have a strategic advantage to apprehend migrants in those remote areas that were often in the desert.

Specific policy decisions lead to migrants’ experiencing cumulative stress and prolonged exposure because of factors such as difficulty and distance of travel, according to a June 2023 study.

The general increase of found migrant remains over the years is not because more migrants are crossing the Arizona-Mexico border. The rate of recovered migrant remains largely has increased even as border apprehensions have decreased, according to the 2021 report.

Have a news tip or story idea about the border and its communities? Contact the reporter at josecastaneda@arizonarepublic.com or connect with him on Twitter @joseicastaneda.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Record heat, U.S. policies contribute to migrant desert deaths


https://www.yahoo.com/news/recipe-de...130121492.html

I guess they did not listen to the Border Czar Kamala Harris telling them "Don't come". Maybe she should tell them speaking in Spanish, Chinese, and all the languages of the world who are INVADING our country.

Stop letting them in, turn them right back around, we owe them absolutely nothing! Go fix your own country you destroyed.

These criminal trespassing parasites are already in ill health, sick, full of diseases, or pregnant before they get here. Expel them all.