Body in El Paso County canal believed to be migrant drowning victim
The body of a migrant believed to have drowned was found in a canal in Socorro, police said.
The man’s body was found about 7 a.m. Thursday in the Franklin Feeder canal running along fields and behind a neighborhood southeast of El Paso, Socorro police said.
The Socorro Police Department said that it appears that the man was a migrant who fell into the canal and drowned. The migrant’s name and country of origin were not immediately available.
Since the release of water from upstream dams last month for the irrigation season, the Rio Grande and canals in the El Paso area are flowing with high levels of water.
The canals might appear deceptively calm and small, but they flow with potentially dangerous undercurrents capable of dragging a person underwater. Migrant drownings in El Paso-area canals are common.
Migrant deaths continue in El Paso border region
Drownings, falls off the border wall, rough desert terrain and extreme heat are among the potentially deadly hazards faced by undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the El Paso region.
So far in fiscal 2024, the U.S. Border Patrol reported that there have been 34 migrant deaths in the agency’s El Paso Sector, which covers the westernmost tip of Texas and all of New Mexico. Border Patrol agents performed more than 300 migrant rescues during that period.
At a border safety event on Tuesday, Border Patrol officials repeated their warnings to migrants not to risk their lives on dangerous journeys trying to enter the United States illegally.
Kerr County has reported its sixth case of animal rabies this year, this time suspected in a dog that attacked a person, officials say.
The latest incident involved a family pet, officials say. The dog bit a person jogging past a property in Center Point, a town a few miles southwest of Kerrville. The dog was euthanized.
Kerr County Animal Services sent the animal for testing, but it was “untestable due to the condition,” the county said in a news release. In that situation, state law requires the case to be treated as a positive rabies test, said Kerr County Animal Services Director
Reagan Givens.
“It is better to be cautious in the interest of public health and safety,” Givens said in a written statement.
The last confirmed case of rabies in a dog in Kerr County was in 2016, according to the county. The five previous confirmed cases in the county this year were all in skunks, and all were found within Kerrville’s city limits. The county had only four reported cases of rabies in all of 2023.
Rabies is a viral disease that affects mammals. It can be transferred to humans through the bite of a rabid animal, entering the nervous system via infected saliva in a wound, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.