Migrant deaths crossing the border between the United States and Mexico have reached 500 this year, 134 of them in a single area.
Additional Border Patrol agents have been sent to the desert west of El Paso, where deaths have soared in 2023.
Most have died of heat exhaustion during this year’s record temperatures, perishing in dusty desert expanses that offer little shade or protection from the elements.
“Smugglers were crossing (immigrants) during the hottest part of the day, and some just don’t make it,” said one agent, speaking on condition of anonymity.
During one week in August, five migrants died of heat exhaustion, federal sources told The Post, prompting agents from other areas to be moved to El Paso, currently the fourth-busiest border crossing in the country.
The vast majority of the 134 deaths in the area are heat-related, the U.S. Border Patrol told The Post. That figure is 88% higher than last year’s 71 deaths.
A migrant in need of medical attention receives care from the Border Patrol’s Search, Trauma and Rescue team, the agency posted on social media on August 9.
The national total of more than 500 in 2023 was first reported by the New York Times.
In a recent case in El Paso, agents encountered an unidentified Mexican man on a sweltering afternoon during a 104-degree day, the agency said.
The migrant was suffering seizures and had no pulse when he was discovered. Officers immediately began trying to revive him and called 911.
Border Patrol agents in the El Paso sector have rescued 485 migrants in fiscal year 2023. US Border Patrol.
Immigrants are dropping dead at the US-Mexico border near Highway 9 in New Mexico. It has become a popular smuggling corridor.
The ambulance arrived just nine minutes later, but the man had gone into cardiac arrest due to his high body temperature and died, the department said.
In just one week in July, the remains of 10 migrants believed to have died from heat exhaustion were found across the border, the Washington Office on Latin America reported.
In Arizona, a 9-year-old migrant boy who had just crossed the border south of Tucson died and began having seizures.
Despite being airlifted to the hospital, the boy died of multiple organ failure, the Border Patrol described in a June news release. The boy’s mother told investigators that her son had no underlying medical conditions and that he had been in sweltering heat and without water for more than an hour before becoming ill.
Typically, human smugglers remain hidden during the hottest hours of the day, opting to bring migrants across the border when the sun has set and temperatures are cooler.
A migrant stranded in Charity Canyon, near Cloverdale, New Mexico, is carried on the back of a Border Patrol agent, the agency said Aug. 4. US Border Patrol
But this year, the second hottest on record in Texas, the cartels’ heartless smugglers pressed ahead with illegal crossings despite the usual temperatures in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
Just outside Texas, the remote region is a hotbed of migrant trafficking. There, criminals have less Border Patrol surveillance due to the scorching heat.
“[The dead] “Either they get lost in the desert or they are abandoned by coyotes (smugglers),” the agent added. “We found some just a few meters from the highway.”
The agent was referring to New Mexico State Highway 9, which runs parallel to the US-Mexico border. Smugglers guide desperate and clueless illegal immigrants across the border, sources told The Post, ordering them to run toward the highway, in some cases just a few hundred yards away.
Agents from the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol carry a man to a waiting ambulance for medical attention. US Border Patrol
911 beacons have been added in the most remote and commonly used smuggling areas to help lost or disoriented migrants get help. US Border Patrol
Often, a car waits to pick up migrants and take them to their next location within the US.
The smugglers return to Mexico and are out of reach of American law enforcement as the migrants run to the road and toward the getaway car. However, sometimes the driver gets scared and leaves or simply isn’t there.
This forces illegal immigrants, whose main goal is to evade Border Patrol, to stop and wait for federal agents to find them, while being exposed to the blinding elements.
The Border Patrol, whose mission is to save all lives on the border as part of its mission to keep it safe, criticized the Mexican cartels for their ruthless tactics.
“Transnational criminal organizations continue to recklessly endanger the lives of people they traffic for their own financial gain,” Border Patrol spokesman Landon Hutchens told The Post in a statement.
Human trafficking is a $13 billion-a-year business for cartels, the U.S. government estimates.
The cruelty of smugglers led to the deadliest case of human trafficking in the United States last year, when 53 immigrants died as a result of being locked in an abandoned truck in San Antonio, Texas.
Federal prosecutors have said the truck’s internal temperature reached 140 degrees, while the migrants were without air conditioning, without water and locked inside the van.
There are now bilingual safety signs in high smuggling traffic areas in the remote desert in an effort to prevent further deaths. US Border Patrol
“The El Paso Sector has more than 150 agents trained as Emergency Medical Technicians or Paramedics. Each Border Patrol agent is trained in first aid and CPR. “Agents are moved within the sector to areas with increased migrant traffic as operations require,” the agency said in a statement.
In addition, the department has also deployed 17 rescue beacons and 500 rescue signs in high-traffic areas so that migrants in difficulty can get help even if they do not have a phone.
Agents in the El Paso sector also rescued more than 485 migrants this financial year, which began in October.
“We want to save some lives,” Border Patrol Agent Fidel Baca told KFOX-TV.
“When we patrol here in the desert we have to change instantly. “We have to change our mindset from a law enforcement mindset to a search and rescue mindset.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn