Thread: Death toll mounts for border crossers

Published: 07.28.2007

Death toll mounts for border crossers
2 more bodies put area on grim, record-setting pace
By Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
counting the dead
The number of bodies found in the first seven months of the year has increased in the past few years in Pima County:
152
bodies found from Jan. 1 through July 25
121
in the same period in 2006
131
in the same period in 2005
The discovery Thursday of the bodies of two illegal border crossers northwest of Tucson has added to a record-breaking year in Pima County for border deaths.
There were 152 illegal border crossers found dead in the county from Jan. 1 through July 25, a pace that is well ahead of 2006 and eclipses the record set in 2005, when there were 131 at this same time, said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner.
"It's scary," Parks said.
Deputies were called at 7:45 a.m. Thursday by two residents who found a body southwest of Marana at North Trico and West Magee roads, said Dawn Hanke, spokeswoman for the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
Deputies could not determine the sex or age of the decomposed body, she said.
Later Thursday, deputies assisted the Border Patrol at about 3:30 p.m. after residents called to say they found a body at 5400 N. Agua Dulce Ranch Road, southwest of Marana in the Ironwood Forest National Monument. Muddy roads forced the deputies to travel north to Toltec — a small town between Eloy and Casa Grande — and then take dirt roads to reach the remote area where the body was found, Hanke said.
The 152 bodies found in Pima County this year are 21 more than in the same period in 2005, a 16 percent increase. The total for all of 2005 was 197 deaths, Parks said.
It is also 31 more bodies that were found during the same period in 2006, a 25 percent increase. The 2006 final year tally was 174 deaths, he said.
The increased number of deaths calls into question the Border Patrol's assertion that reduced apprehensions in the Tucson Sector — down 11 percent from 2006 through June — indicate a decrease in border crossings.
To the contrary, says the Rev. Robin Hoover, the founder of Tucson-based Humane Borders, which places water tanks throughout the desert. About 30 percent to 40 percent more people are crossing this summer than usual, said Hoover, who travels often to Altar, Sonora, where people come from all across Mexico and Central America to prepare to cross in the Altar Valley.
"The economy is the biggest player, always has been and always will be, so jobs must be picking up somewhere," Hoover said.
The other factor might be the weather, which has been harsher this year compared with last summer when cool cloud cover was more common, he said.
The increase demonstrates again that the Department of Homeland Security's border enforcement strategy is part of the problem, said Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Tucson-based Coalición de Derechos Humanos, and Melissa McCormick, senior research specialist at the Binational Migration Institute at the University of Arizona. The increasing number of agents and presence of the National Guard pushes illegal entrants into more remote routes.
"The more difficult you make it for people to cross without taking care of the underlying issues, the more deaths we're going to see," Garcia said.
The Border Patrol objects to the blame and says that preventing deaths is a top priority. The agency has 45 agents in Borstar (the agency's search, trauma and rescue team) and brought in 14 more this summer from California and Texas. That means there are 10 to 12 Borstar agents in the Tucson Sector per shift.
From Oct. 1 through June 30, agents had rescued 318 people in 118 incidents in the Tucson Sector, which covers New Mexico to the Yuma County line, agency numbers show.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/193806

The illegals have no one to blame but themselves for engaging in criminal activity that could lead to these consequences. I'm sorry but I don't have much sympathy here. What concerns me is the 50,000 American citizens that have died since 9/11 due to drunk driving and murder by illegal aliens. As I have told evey Senator and Congressman I have contacted, "Why does even one American citizen have to suffer a crime, much less death, due to illegal aliens that should not be here at all?

Like my Husband just asked me when he saw me posting this article, "why doesn't Condie Rice ever talk to the Mexican government?"

ARIZONA DAILY STAR - They have a lot to do with the deaths , By not pushing for border security they might as well have killed those people themselves .