(BrightPress.org) – Migrants seeking illicit entry into the United States are risking their lives, traversing more remote terrain in order to avoid capture by authorities due to the possibility of being turned back. Folks who choose to cross the Arizona desert near Tucson are picking the deadliest spot along the border to date.
Many migrants cross the border and enter the town of Lukeville, Arizona where they meet authorities and are processed for eventual release. For those who prefer to avoid that process, they risk their lives crossing the desert where migrant encounters are up 160% this year versus 2022. Deaths have also spiked; 24 to date versus just 9 in 2022, a jump of 167% matching the percent increase of encounters.
Keep in mind, these are just the deaths reported in the Tucson Sector and only the ones that we know about because the bodies were found by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Most of the deaths in the state were located in this particular sector, and of those nearly all of them were heat-related deaths. These numbers also do not include bodies recovered by local police or any other agency, so it’s an undercount according to the anonymous CBP official who spoke with Breitbart.
He explained that migrants from Mexico face expulsion, and criminals, or other individuals who might be flagged for immediate removal also risk the journey. They travel through remote mountain areas, deserts, and other hard-to-reach terrain making rescue difficult. Many folks are unaware of how much water they need to survive the journey, and the treacherous terrain makes disabling accidents a potential risk.
Many examples of authorities encountering migrants in distress who are then airlifted to a hospital are frequent on X (Twitter).
Breitbart reports that Border Patrol had 49,000 migrant encounters in August alone. The source suggested that there are likely many more bodies out there that haven’t been found, occasionally they find old remains that are just bones.
The UN has previously declared the U.S.-Mexico border the single most dangerous international border to walk over in the world. In 2022, there were over 800 recorded deaths.
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