Death on the Border: Radiolab’s Border Trilogy
Radiolab has a three part podcast looking at deaths on the U.S./Mexico border. Here is the summary:
“While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn’t expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh.
This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness. In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.”
Over three episodes, Radiolab will investigate this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it.”
Here is the first installment (A Hole in the Fence), which is interesting to say the least. The case of Murillo v. Musegades, in which the court enjoined Border Patrol practices targeting Latina/os, including U.S. citizens, in the area surrounding an El Paso high school.
KJ