US says migrant deaths at record on Mexico border
Deaths of illegal immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border soared to an all-time high in the past year, as a brutal heatwave killed hundreds in the remote Arizona desert, the U.S. agency in charge of border security said on Monday.
The U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection said at least 464 immigrants died crossing the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border during the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, a rise of 43 percent on the previous year and the highest number since records began.
Spokesman Mario Villarreal, speaking in a phone call from Washington, said well over half the deaths occurred in Arizona – the most crossed route for immigrants seeking to reach the United States – as temperatures there soared above 120 F (49 C) in a hot spell in June and July.
“This total by far exceeds any year that we have on record … (and) one of the primary factors was the incredibly hot summer,” Villarreal said.
Each year more than one million undocumented migrants, most of them from Mexico and other parts of Latin America, attempt the journey across the border in search of work, most of them on foot.
Villarreal said the main cause of death, accounting for at least 165 fatalities during the 12-month period, was heat exposure.
Others drowned in border rivers or perished in car crashes in failed attempts to outrun Border Patrol agents on rural highways and freeways.
Border Patrol agents also carried out a record number of rescues during the period, noting 2,570 operations, almost twice the number in fiscal 2004.
Source: alertnet.org
Record deaths on US-Mexico border
A record number of illegal migrants have died while trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, say US customs officers.
At least 464 had died in the past year to 30 September, they said. The figure is a 43% increase on the previous year.
High temperatures in June and July caused many deaths, but others were due to car accidents or drowning.
A more accurate reporting procedure in the Arizona area was another factor in the rise.
According to the Reuters news agency, border patrols also conducted a record number of 2,570
U.S. flights to Mexico fail to cut migrant deaths
A U.S. government program that returns illegal immigrants to Mexico by flying them deep into the country is ineffective at reducing the number of deaths in the Arizona desert, analysts said on Wednesday.
The Interior Repatriation Program of daily charter flights from Tucson to Mexico City and Guadalajara was implemented in 2004 to cut deaths in the summer months.
Instead of dropping the migrants near the border as is usually done, the program flies them hundreds of miles inside Mexico. The idea was to deter migrants from immediately reattempting to cross the border via
Record deaths in U.S.-Mexico crossings
A record 460 migrants died crossing the United States-Mexico border in the last year, the U.S. Border Patrol says.
The toll was pushed higher by unusually hot temperatures and a shift of illegal migration routes through remote deserts.
The death total from Oct. 1, 2004, through Sept. 29 surpassed the previous record of 383 deaths set in 2000, according to Border Patrol statistics.
The dead were mostly Mexicans, many from the states of Mexico, Guanajuato and Veracruz, but also from the impoverished Southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, the Los Angeles Times said.
Migrants continue to die in automobile accidents
Beyond the season of death on the US-Mexico border
When I arrived in southern Arizona in the first days of June, temperatures were in the 90s - considerably more bearable than two weeks earlier when the mercury spiked and reached 115 degrees. The heat wave marked the early beginning of another "summer of death" in Arizona's Sonoran Desert: Authorities found the bodies of 12 unauthorized immigrants in the scorched terrain stretching from Yuma in the west to Douglas in the east.
This summer has been especially deadly in Arizona as migrants are perishing - most frequently from heatstroke and dehydration -
Mexico pushing for probe in deaths of 2 immigrants
Their ire stoked by plans in Washington for tougher border enforcement, Mexican officials and politicians are pressing for investigations of the deaths of two young men while they were crossing illegally into the United States.
The men's deaths, one near San Diego last week and the other at Laredo in mid-December, are being blamed on the U.S. Border Patrol.
President Vicente Fox's government sent a diplomatic note this week to the Bush administration calling for an investigation into the Dec. 30 shooting death of Guillermo Martinez, 18, on the border near San Diego.
And
Mexico calls for migrant plan, not troops at border
Mexico on Thursday called for immigration reform that was "orderly and respectful of human rights" after Arizona announced plans to expand the presence of the National Guard on the Mexico-U.S. border.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano issued an executive order on Wednesday expanding the number of National Guard troops operating on the border with Mexico to fight illegal immigration.
"They are there to provide support to civilian law enforcement at the border. They are not there to militarize the border. We are not at war with Mexico," Gov. Napolitano said in comments published on Thursday
MONTERREY, Mexico – The U.S. and Mexican governments on Wednesday announced a bilateral effort to help authorities identify and prosecute migrant smugglers working on their common border.
The program, dubbed "OASISS," will facilitate the exchange of information and evidence to assist both governments in the prosecution of migrant smugglers and help save migrant lives, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said in a statement.
"By exchanging critical information, coordinating enforcement operations and jointly targeting cross border criminal activity we will yield a more safe and secure border," Bonner said.
OASISS stands for Operation Against Smugglers Initiative on
US resumes repatriation flights for illegal immigrants from Mexico
The US Department of Homeland Security [official website] resumed its repatriation program [JURIST report; DHS backgrounder] for illegal immigrants from Mexico Friday with a flight carrying 67 people to Mexico City. This is the third straight summer that the federal government has used the program, which twice daily flies Mexicans caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border to Mexico City and then buses them to their home communities. It specifically targets women, children, and those deemed at physical risk if they tried to cross the border again.
The US government hopes that the
WASHINGTON -- The Mexican staging area for illegal aliens that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson demanded this week be bulldozed is among hundreds of similar sites along the border sponsored and maintained by the Mexican government.
Many of the sites are marked with blue flags and pennants to signal that water is available. Others, such as the Las Chepas site that Mr. Richardson denounced, are a collection of old, mostly abandoned buildings or ranch houses where illegals gather for water and other supplies -- sometimes bartering with smugglers, or "coyotes," for
Gulf of Mexico dolphin deaths reported
Scientists concerned by bottlenose dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico have reportedly asked for the marine mammal equivalent of a disaster declaration.
A 12-member working group of scientists voted Monday to recommend the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration add the dolphin deaths to an "unusual mortality event" the group declared in March for manatees, the Naples (Fla.) Daily News reported Tuesday.
The scientists suspect "red tide" is responsible for the deaths and NOAA is expected to initiate a study of the microscopic algae bloom's effects on dolphins, manatees, sea turtles and even seabirds.
More: upi.com
