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When the remains of two undocumented migrants were found in the desert of southwestern Arizona last July, a body lay next to an arrow drawn in the sand, pointing north, with the word “HELP” on it. »Written below.
The men had perished trying to cross the United States from Mexico, according to a border patrol. Of a group of three, one survived and told federal agents their human smuggler left the other two behind in the remote wilderness.
“These people aren’t just numbers,” said Tony Banegas, executive director of the Colibri Center for Human Rights, an organization in Tucson that works to identify migrant remains and help families locate missing loved ones.
“They are human beings with families and aspirations. They went to great lengths to make the trip, [only] just become a grave in the wilderness.
Last year was the deadliest on record for migrants illegally crossing the United States via Arizona, with the remains of 227 migrants found at the border according to Humane Borders.
“It was the hottest summer ever, and we saw the highest number of deaths on record. It’s a reminder of how dangerous the border is, ”said Douglas Ruopp, president of the non-profit organization, which maps migrant deaths and hides emergency water supplies in the desert.
Since 1998, at least 7,000 migrants have reportedly died along the US-Mexico border, possibly many more, as record keeping is patchy.
As the United States has sealed off more of the border, a political priority under Donald Trump, the risks to those still determined to make the trip have only increased.
“It’s a long-standing tradition, these barriers and walls have pushed people to more remote and dangerous terrain,” said Jeremy Slack, assistant professor of geography at the University of Texas-El Paso and author of Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Evolution of US-Mexico Border Migration.
Crossing one of the four US states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California along the 1,954-mile US-Mexico border can be dangerous – high barriers, secluded wilderness with extreme temperatures , swirling waters of the Rio Grande.
Norma Herrera is a community organizer for the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network advocacy group in Texas, another deadly migrant corridor where at least 3,000 people have lost their lives since 1998.
“We need to be particularly careful about how various policies serve the same purpose… to deter migration by making it more deadly,” she said.
Further west, the Arizona desert can be particularly deadly.
Trump’s aspiration to build a coast-to-coast wall at Mexico’s expense has in fact only resulted in 225 miles of fresh barrier, mostly at U.S. taxpayer expense and mostly replacing dilapidated or minimal fences.
But the surge in Arizona’s border death toll last year – up from 144 in 2019 and 128 in 2018 – coincided with a wave of construction there.
And the border wall’s impact on migrant deaths has been compounded by Trump’s near-total blockade, only tightened in the pandemic, on those entering the United States to seek asylum.
“In almost all cases, the Trump administration has fundamentally ended access to asylum at the border,” said ACLU lawyer Shaw Drake, exposing those attempting to cross anyway. “To a litany of additional dangers.”
Benegas described visits to Mexico where asylum seekers languished in dangerous cities awaiting endless asylum proceedings, as part of Trump’s Stay in Mexico policy, denying “a universal right.”
“People live under bridges, waiting for months. Some decide to take the risk and cross the desert, ”he says.
In March 2020, Trump signed an emergency order last March authorizing the summary deportation of migrants at the border based on Covid-19 concerns, removing more than 380,000 people in this manner to date, according to the reports. federal data.
“They co-opted the pandemic to achieve their long-standing goal of ending asylum at the border,” Drake said.
The Arizona border region features spiked cacti, thorny bushes and sticky grasses, often containing torn fragments of migrants’ clothing.
“The flora along the border is known as thorn scrub, and for good reason,” said Emily Burns, program director of the Arizona-based Sky Island Alliance conservation group. “We can’t wear soft clothes on the pitch, they would be shredded,” she said.
Many migrants are unprepared for the alien landscape and find themselves on a scorching trek.
“Often people don’t have real shoes. Some are wearing sandals, they are told it will be just a short trip. Most of the people I meet in the desert have these terrible blisters on their feet. I don’t know how they work, said Ruopp.
Many don’t or can’t carry enough water for a trip that can last for days.
“Most leave with two gallon bottles strapped around their necks,” Ruopp said. “It’s good for maybe one day. We find people who have been absent for five years or more. “
Last year was not only the hottest on record, the summer monsoon rains failed to materialize.
Ruopp encountered many lost and “delusional”, even “walking in a circle” or unknowingly “returning south to Mexico”.
Dehydration “really affects your decision making” and is a terrible way to die, he says.
Many are hoping things will change completely under Joe Biden.
Since being sworn in, Biden has suspended evictions, although a judge last week overturned that moratorium. And the government officially rescinded Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation and detention of families at the border, with further setbacks to follow.
But while the president has issued a stop-work order for the construction of border walls, it is not certain that the barriers will be removed.
Arizona Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva wants the Biden-Harris administration to put humanity at the center of immigration policy.
“I urge them to reverse all of Trump’s xenophobic policies that have created chaos,” he told The Guardian.
Grijalva concluded: “It is no secret that the Trump administration’s draconian border policies have created a humanitarian crisis that has pushed vulnerable asylum seekers onto increasingly desperate and dangerous routes. seek safety … and cost countless lives.
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