Immigrant Deaths Are Changing the Border Profile

“My heart tells me that my wife is still alive, and her sister feels the same. We imagine that she is in the hands of a cartel,” says Luis Fuentes. The Salvadorian last spoke to Marilú Noeli Alas Santos on Sept. 3, 2012 when she was in Reynosa, Mexico about to cross the U.S. border.

Marilú crossed the Río Grande with her sister Reyna and a group of other immigrants. After arriving in McAllen, Texas, the two sisters were separated by their guides. Reyna, who is now in U.S. immigration custody, remembers Marilú being driven away in a car, while she herself was taken to a hotel and raped. She managed to escape after two days.

Thanks to Reyna, Fuentes knows that his wife reached the U.S. “They kidnapped her, that’s all I know. We have a three-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son. My daughter talks about her mother every day as she is going to sleep. She says that her mother buys things for her, that she has been with her,” he says.

“If they said ‘Look, your wife is dead, here is her body, we are going to bury her,’ at least I would know what happened to her, that I had found her. Whether she is alive or dead, I need an answer. My children can’t deal with this every day,” he insists.

This year, the Mexican government announced the creation of the National Registry for Disappeared Persons, with the aim of determining the whereabouts of around 25,000 missing people. However, on the U.S. side of the border, each state and district manages the figures and protocols in its own way. The same is true for the identification of bodies found near the border.

According to Border Patrol figures, in 2012 alone 463 deaths were registered for migrants trying to cross the U.S. border illegally. This figure is the highest since 2005, when a record 492 deaths were recorded. That year, Customs and Border Protection detained 1,189,075 migrants, while in 2012 there were only 364,768 arrests, meaning that while detentions have fallen by 70 percent deaths have remained steady.

Texas, the New Focal Point

She was soaked to the skin and shivering when they found her in the vast desert borderlands of Texas. An 11-year-old from El Salvador, she had become separated from her group and would certainly have died if she had not been found by an air patrol with a medical team on board. These patrols are a new, but increasingly common, response to the current reality in the state, where activists insist that thousands of unidentified bodies are buried.

The story is just one of hundreds. An unidentified girl was lost while her group tried to elude border patrols at the Sarita checkpoint, one of 15 constantly patrolled border crossings in Texas. When some of the migrants were arrested, they alerted the authorities about the girl, and air and marine agents set out to search for her in a helicopter, together with an emergency medical team. After receiving first aid treatment, she was taken to the Kingsville border patrol station. “The practice of including medical staff as part of air and marine crews is relatively new, but we are seeing results,” explains border patrol agent Rosendo Hinojosa. “It means that we are able to respond more quickly, and save more lives.”

The change comes in response to the new reality that has become apparent in Texas as the migrant death toll increases. During the past few years, increasing numbers of migrants have been detained while trying to enter the U.S. illegally along this stretch of the border, while numbers have declined by similar amounts in Yuma, Arizona. In 2005, there were 138,438 arrests in Yuma, while in 2012 there were only 6,500. Meanwhile, numbers have increased since 2010 and 2011 in Texas, where, for example, there were 97,762 arrests around Valle de Río Grande in 2012 compared with 59,243 in 2011.

“The flow of migrants has been diverted from Arizona to Texas, and we are seeing corresponding changes in numbers of migrant deaths on the border,” explains Fernando García, director of Border Network for Human Rights, a civil rights organization working on the border. “This is not just because of Arizona’s SB1070, but also because of the wave of xenophobia that has taken over the state in the last five or six years, leading to laws criminalizing immigrants. This is on top of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s raids.” Arizona’s legislation was controversial because, among other reasons, it made nonpossession of migration documents a criminal offense, while Arpaio has become known for raids and mass arrests of undocumented immigrants.

According to those like García who work on the border, the problem of large numbers of migrants dying while trying to cross the border “has been going on for years, at least since 1993.” However, there is greater awareness of the situation now because more people are working to tackle it, and because of new technologies.

“Increases in security and in border patrol deployments have forced migrants to try to cross the border in more isolated areas, and this means it is much more difficult for them to make the attempt unaided, so they turn to criminal organizations. Together with the harsh natural conditions in areas like Falfurrias [Texas], this is a lethal combination,” explains García.

Rafael Larraenza, director of Desert Angels, has spent the last 16 years working with a group of volunteers to rescue migrants who have lost their way while trying to cross the border. The families of migrants who have disappeared often contact Larraenza for help in finding their relatives, but they usually have little information about where or with whom the crossings were attempted.

“The cartels trick them, they send them off saying that the border is a 15 minute walk away, when in fact the walk takes more than 15 hours. They have no food, no water and no clothes suitable for conditions of extreme heat or cold,” says Larraenza. “There are two words we don’t want to hear when they call us. The first is ‘Falfurrias’ and the second is ‘Altar’ near Sonora in Mexico.”

Thousands, not Hundreds

In Texas alone, CBP recorded 271 deaths in 2012, compared to 168 in 2005. Local activists and community organizations insist that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that thousands of migrants who died trying to cross the border are buried in surrounding areas. In Brook County, which includes Falfurrias, 129 undocumented immigrant deaths were reported in 2012. In 2013, the county began DNA testing to identify victims. This practice is required by state law, although it is not enforced in most border counties, and according to University of Houston professor of anthropology Christine Kovic in her report “Searching for the Living, the Dead and the New Disappeared on the Migrant Trail in Texas” it “is not being carried out in a standardized and coordinated manner.” The report blames a lack of standardized criteria for classifying deaths on the border for dramatic underestimates in the death toll.

At the beginning of November, the Southern Texas Human Rights Organization opened its doors in Falfurrias. Led by activist Eduardo Canales, the group was founded with the aim of “eliminating deaths on the Mexican border.”

“The county is not complying with state law, and when efforts began to identify those who had died, no one expected to find so many,” says Canales. The failure to comply with the law is mainly due to costs. Transporting a body can cost an average of $750, while DNA testing costs around $2,000; these resources are not available within the state budget.

Projects like “Reuniting Families” at Baylor University in Texas have helped to address the problem. Last summer, a team led by anthropologist Lori Baker exhumed 120 bodies from the local cemetery in Falfurrias. Since 2002, Baker has collaborated with projects to exhume human remains in various areas. These projects have identified more than 70 people.

“Thousands of people are buried here. In Falfurrias, the funeral home does not have the capacity to identify so many people, and this recurrent problem on the border is not being dealt with. Ranchers do not grant access to their land, so bodies cannot be found. The situation is unsustainable,” says Larraenza.

The names of 200 missing people were read out during the inauguration ceremony for the Southern Texas Human Rights Organization, and these are only the relatives of families who have contacted the organization to ask for help. Fuentes has even read out his wife’s name in Washington, D.C., when he traveled to the capital to speak with legislators. The situation remains unresolved so far, despite Fuentes having requested help from the El Salvador consulate and numerous local organizations. “I will look for her as long as God keeps me alive,” he says. “That is the example I want to set for my children. I will never give up.”