But despite beefed-up efforts to stem illegal immigration and an economy that makes work harder to come by, migrants are still trying to get into the country. And many are dying.
In 2005, a record 196 bodies were found in
“”We’re kind of looking at a record-breaking year this year,”” Peters said.
July was the worst month of this year so far, with 59 people found dead. More than half of them died from heat-related causes. On
To accommodate the bodies in the summer heat, a 50-foot refrigerated trailer truck has been parked in the coroner’s receiving area.
More than 66 percent of the bodies found this year are still unidentified. Sometimes corpses are reduced to skeletal remains; some are mummified by the sun and shriveled like raisins. Of the seven bodies found
The
“”We don’t start from scratch because we have a big whereabouts database,”” said
Border deaths were sparse throughout the 1990s. But in 2000, the numbers jumped drastically, and four years later the county created a name for the type of person dying, the “”undocumented border crosser.””
Increased border enforcement in
Some migrants try to time their journeys to the summer monsoon season with its cooling rains, said
“”The experience 10 years ago is completely different than now,”” Rodriguez said. “”It’s brutal and ruthless.””
It’s difficult to know how many people die crossing the Southwest border each year.
In
“”Every mile of the border in
Oddly, although the number of deaths is on the rise, illegal immigration is down. Apprehensions at the border have dropped by 61 percent in the last fiscal year compared with 2000. This year, 194,000 people have been apprehended, down by 5 percent from the same time last year.
“”Crossing the border isn’t as easy as it was before,”” said
Humanitarian groups such as Humane Borders in
Gomez asked the woman if she would cross again.
“”She just smiled,”” Gomez said. “”I could tell right away that she basically didn’t think she had a choice.””
Some human rights groups try to help migrants survive the desert. Humane
Volunteer
“”People have been walking in this corridor for years,”” Leslie said after refilling a blue 55-gallon barrel. “”I have no doubt that these barrels have saved a life.””
But they couldn’t save