Posted on 07/19/2005 6:17:44 AM PDT by Borax Queen
Illegal entrants crossing through the Tucson Sector this fiscal year are dying at a rate 14 times greater than they did seven years ago - when the U.S. Border Patrol started its concerted effort to save them.
In 1998, the agency began the Border Safety Initiative, asking Mexican and Central American nationals not to cross the desert and putting in place its rescue teams in remote areas. At the end of the program's first year, the agency tallied 11 people dead in its Tucson Sector, about three for every 100,000 apprehensions made.
Apprehension numbers this fiscal year are at about the same level as in 1998, but the number of dead has soared to nearly 40 for every 100,000 apprehensions in the Tucson Sector, which covers most of Arizona except for an area around Yuma.
Critics say the agency undercuts its own efforts by targeting urban areas even as it sends rescue teams into the more remote, deadly desert.
With just over two months remaining in the fiscal year, the number of apprehensions - 366,282 - is virtually the same as in 1998, when there were 387,486 apprehensions by the end of the fiscal year. But the deaths of migrants are now occurring west of Tucson and Nogales, primarily on the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation, medical examiner reports show.
The Border Patrol tried to curb deaths, and crossings in general, with radio, newspaper and television ads. But the death count this year already surpasses last year. An Arizona Daily Star compilation of medical examiner records show that at least 170 illegal entrants have died in Southern Arizona since the start of the federal fiscal year Oct. 1. The Border Patrol's Tucson Sector counts 144 locally through Sunday but does not track every death.
The death count includes only the number of bodies found, but hundreds more are reported missing each year, said Jorge Solchaga of the Mexican consul-general's office in Phoenix, which collects 600 reports a year. Twenty percent of cases are never solved, he said. The situation is about the same in every other Arizona consulate, he said.
The most recent dead include 10 bodies found since Friday, one of them a 13-year-old boy.
Even the Border Patrol's national headquarters acknowledges the sharp spike in deaths this summer.
"The strong probability exists for a record number of migrant deaths," the agency wrote in a statement Monday about the heat wave plaguing Arizona.
The Border Patrol spent $700,000 in ad campaigns last year, urging people not to come illegally, said national spokesman Mario Villarreal. This year, $1.6 million was used to purchase airtime in Mexico, he said.
But the Border Patrol does not know if the campaign is working, he said.
"Nobody in Mexico understands these commercials," said Guillermo Alonso Meneses, a professor with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana who studies illegal migration into the United States. "They should use a telenovela (a television soap opera) to get the message out. As it is, people face a higher risk than they ever did before."
As part of the Border Safety Initiative, the agency created rescue teams - BORSTAR, for Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue. Villarreal did not have costs for the teams or the equipment they use in the field.
"What would be happening if BSI (Border Safety Initiative) wasn't there?" Villarreal said of the 7-year-old program. "I know for a fact we have rescued over 1,800 people."
Some wonder where Mexico's responsibility lies in the deaths. That government has said nothing about the past two months of death in the Arizona desert, noted Glenn Spencer, president of the border activist group, American Border Patrol.
"Where is their responsibility in this?" he asked. Mexico's silence only fuels his belief that the country is trying to take over U.S. land, he said.
"These Mexicans are dying for the same reasons - to conquer territory," he said.
Deaths would be even higher without the ad campaigns, said the Migration Policy Institute's Doris Meissner, who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Clinton administration, when the Border Safety Initiative began.
"The problem is the broader failure of policy, not the Border Safety Initiative," she said.
"At the same time they are redoubling the safety initiative, they're also intensifying the strategy of pushing the undocumented traffic into ever more remote places where the possibility of being rescued decreases all the time," said Claudia Smith, director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in California. "That's not deterring anybody."
It didn't deter Maria Rod- riguez, an illegal entrant who lives in the darkness of a brown brick apartment in Glendale.
The 60-year-old woman's son, Tomas Romero, went back to Mexico City for her and other family members two years ago, leading the family into the U.S. through Sonoyta, Sonora, then Lukeville in the middle of August. The group barely survived half a day.
The woman staggered in the desert; the black spots in front of her eyes wouldn't go away and she felt as if she'd stopped breathing. The smugglers walked away, saying they'd be back. Then Romero, 36, left to search for water as Rodriguez's grandson and nephew propped her up.
The family carried her to Arizona 85 to surrender to the Border Patrol. They didn't tell agents Romero was still in the desert.
Two years later, he is still missing. His mother prays daily to a small altar.
The family cannot search the desert themselves. The entire group lives in the United States illegally and fears the immigration agents who, paradoxically, can help them locate him, or find his body.
"Whether he is dead or he is alive," his mother sobs, rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes squeezed shut. "I want my son."
Comparison of apprehensions, fatalities
YEAR DEATHS APPREHENSIONS Deaths per 100,000 apps
1998 11 387,406 2.8
1999 29 470,449 6.2
2000 74 616,346 12
2001 78 444,834 17.1
2002 134 328,043 40.5
2003 139 340,927 40.1
2004 141 482,145 28.6
2005 144 366,282 39.3**
**Through July 17, using the agency's tally of deaths.
I think we've seen a variation of this article recently, but this is on the front page again today.
"...when the U.S. Border Patrol started its concerted effort to save them."
They should start a concerted effort to keep them out.
Yes, that is when the paper is not using "crossers" or "migrants." I keep posting these articles so everyone can see how illegal is no longer illegal.
THe more the government spends to eliminate a social ill, the more that ill grows. Health care costs, poverty, illegals dying in the desert....
You forgot the BANG!
URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PHOENIX AZ 400 AM MST TUE JUL 19 2005
AZZ020-021-025-026-CAZ031-192300- LOWER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY AZ-LOWER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY CA-SOUTHWEST DESERTS-WEST CENTRAL DESERTS-YUMA/MARTINEZ LAKE AND VICINITY-INCLUDING THE CITIES of.. BLYTHE... BOUSE... QUARTZSITE... SALOME.. DATELAND... TACNA... WELLTON... EHRENBERG... PARKER... SAN LUIS.. SOMERTON... YUMA
400 AM MST (400 AM PDT) TUE JUL 19 2005
...A HEAT ADVISORY IS IN EFFECT FROM 10 AM UNTIL 8 PM TODAY AND WEDNESDAY FOR SOUTHWEST ARIZONA AND THE LOWER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY INCLUDING YUMA..
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PHOENIX HAS CONTINUED A HEAT ADVISORY FOR SOUTHWEST ARIZONA AND THE LOWER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY INCLUDING YUMA FROM 10 AM UNTIL 8 PM TODAY AND AGAIN WEDNESDAY.
HIGH TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO BE 112 DEGREES AT YUMA...116 DEGREES AT BLYTHE...AND AROUND 118 DEGREES AT HOTTEST DESERT LOCATIONS TUESDAY...AND ALMOST AS HOT WEDNESDAY.
IF YOU PLAN TO BE OUTSIDE THROUGH EARLY THIS EVENING AND AGAIN TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY...AVOID PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO THE HEAT AND SUN...AND AVOID STRENUOUS PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IF POSSIBLE. YOUR BODY CAN LOSE UP TO A GALLON OF WATER AN HOUR THROUGH PERSPIRATION. STAY IN THE SHADE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE AND DRINK PLENTY OF NON-ALCOHOLIC FLUIDS TO AVOID DEHYDRATION. WEAR LIGHTWEIGHT...LIGHT-COLORED.. LOOSE-FITTING CLOTHING. WEAR A WIDE-BRIMMED HAT TO SHIELD YOURSELF FROM THE SUN.
DKS
That always bothers me too. The (Red) Star is the only paper I know of that uses that euphemism. The correct term is ILLEGAL ALIENS.
But then I suppose the Arizona Daily (Red) Star has no agenda in mind, do they?
By the way, those temperatures are in the shade, which there isn't much of in SW AZ.
Entrants??? What is this, a contest?
How stupid is it to try to cross the border in the middle of July?
The numbers are incredible...
I'm reminded of a line in "Dances with Wolves"...
"Now somebody back home is wondering, No why don't he write?"
You'd think that would send a signal back home that...
Don't cross the border!!!
Instead they see and hear of things like...
There's water stations to help you break the law...And that it is unlikely anyone will catch you, so ironically, if you get into trouble, you'll die before someone finds you to "help" you continue to break our law...
Thank goodness it's only entrants dying. I'd be mighty po'd if it were illegal aliens dying.
That was my first thought exactly! Entrants, h311! Illegal trespassing invaders!
Somebody added some AWESOME keywords for me today! LOL.
How stupid is it to try to cross the border in the middle of July?
It's not stupid, skeeter, it's ignorant. The coyotes tell their clients that Phoenix is a short, easy, one day walk after they cross the border. Most of the illegals are just plain ignorant...they don't have a clue what lies before them. Phoenix is 200 miles north of the border.
Oh, cry me a Rio Grande! Stay home, problem solved. Blackbird.
I thought this was about a fishing contest or a beauty contest or something--people paying a fee and signing up to be an entrant in a contest.
"Entrants? ENTRANTS!?!"
Entrants......or
Paper-challenged Water Crossers
Workers Without Borders
Differently Languaged Aqua-people
Southern Friends of Color
Nomads of Color
Mestizo River Friends
The Differently Neighbored
Seasonal Job Visitors
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