Migrant border deaths in Arizona on track for record
DOUGLAS, Ariz.— Heat exposure killed 19-yearold Cesar de la Cruz on an Arizona trail in July during his trek up from southern Mexico. The body of Juan Lopez Valencia, another young Mexican man, was discovered Aug. 3 along a dry wash on Native American land.
After the hottest, driest summer in state history, authorities have recovered close to a 10-year record in the number of bodies of people who crossed from Mexico into Arizona’s deserts, valley sand mountains. It’ s a reminder that the most remote paths to enter the U.S. can be the deadliest.
Enforcement efforts in neighboring states over the years have helped drive people into Arizona’s difficult terrain, and some officials and activists believe stepped- up construction of President Donald Trump’s border wall this year, largely in Arizona, also could be pushing migrants into dangerous areas without easy access to food and water.
De la Cruz and Lopez Valencia were among 214 confirmed or suspected migrants whose deaths at the Arizona border were documented from January to November by the nonprofit Humane Borders and the Pi ma County Medical Examiner’ s Office, which together map recoveries of human remains.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the high temperatures have had a lotto do with it,” said Mike Kreyche, Humane Borders’ mapping coordinator.
The highest annual number that the project documented was 224 in 2010. It wasn’t clear if 2020 would exceed that once December is factored in.
The Border Patrol keeps its own statistics, counting the remains of suspected migrants it learns about in the course of its duties, according to its parent agency, Customs and Border Protection. CBP said that if another agency recovers remains and doesn’t notify the Border Patrol, it won’t be included in its tally.
For the first ninemonths of 2020, the Border Patrol listed 43 deaths in the Yuma and Tucson sectors that makeup the Arizona border area. The mapping project tracked 181 deaths over the same period.
During the 2019 calendar year, the federal government listed 70 deaths in Arizona, while the mapping project counted 144.
Federal statistics show that search and rescue operations near Arizona’ s border inexplicably dipped to 213 during a record-hot July and August, from 232 in July and August 2019. But early fall figures indicate rescues across the Southwest were trending up.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors was told in October that high temperatures and dry weather were apparently the reason more bodieswere found this year. While recoveries included skeletons, many deaths were recent.
The National Weather Service in Phoenix says the average high temperature was nearly 110 degrees in July and nearly 111 in August, helping make it the hottest summer in history. Phoenix’s highs tend to be roughly the same as those in Arizona’s Son or an Desert just north of the boundary with Mexico, forecasters say.
Theweather service said July and August also were the state’s driest summer months on record.