9 migrants die while crossing swift Texas river, officials say
Officials on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border searched for more victims Saturday after at least nine migrants died while trying to cross the rain-swollen Rio Grande river, a dangerous border-crossing attempt in an area where the water level had risen by more than 2 feet in a day.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials discovered the victims near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday, after days of heavy rains. U.S. officials recovered six bodies, while Mexican teams recovered three, according to a CBP statement.
The river, which was a little more than 3 feet deep at the start of the week, reached more than 5 feet on Thursday, and the water was flowing five times faster than usual, according to the National Weather Service.
The CBP said U.S. crews rescued 37 others from the river and detained 16 more, while Mexican officials took 39 migrants into custody.
CBP did not say where the migrants were from and did not provide any additional information on rescue and search operations. Local agencies in Texas that were involved have not responded to requests for information.
The Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is fast becoming the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Agents stopped migrants nearly 50,000 times in the sector in July, with Rio Grande Valley second at about 35,000. Eagle Pass is about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio.
Among the reasons the area has become popular for migrants in recent years is that it is not as strongly controlled by cartels and is perceived to be somewhat
safer, said Stephanie Leutert, director of Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the University of Texas’ Center for International Security and Law.
“It might keep you out of cities that are notoriously dangerous,” Leutert said.
The area draws migrants from dozens of countries, many of them families with young children. About six of 10 stops in the Del Rio sector in July were migrants from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua.
The sector, which extends 245 miles along the Rio Grande, has been especially dangerous because river currents can be deceptively fast and change quickly. In a news release last month, CBP said it had discovered bodies of over 200 migrants in the sector from October through July.
This year is on track to break last year’s record for the most deaths on the U.S.-Mexico border since 2014, when the U.N. International Organization for Migration began keeping record. The organization has tallied over 4,000 deaths on the border since 2014, based on news
reports and other sources, including 728 last year and 412 during the first seven months of this year.
The Border Patrol has not released official tallies since 2020.
Some of the busiest crossings on the border — including Eagle Pass and Yuma, Arizona — were relatively quiet two years ago and now largely draw migrants from outside Mexico and Central America’s “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Mexico has agreed to take migrants from the Northern Triangle countries, as well as its own nationals, if they are expelled from the United States under Title 42, the pandemic rule in effect since March 2020 that denies rights to seek asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
People from other countries are likely to be released into the U.S. on humanitarian parole or with notices to appear in immigration court because the U.S. has difficulty flying them home due to costs, strained diplomatic relations or other considerations.