Death on the Border: How U.S. Policy Turned the Sonoran Desert Into a Graveyard for Migrants
In the scorching heat of the summer, deaths of migrants along the U.S./Mexico border spike. The deaths occur regularly and result from the increased enforcement measures in major border hubs, which re-routes migrants to isolated deserts and mountains in most extreme climates.. ImmigrationProf regularly posts about the deaths.
James Verini for thr New York Times Magazine tells the story of one migrant who died in the Arizona desert. Guatemalan migrant Roberto Primero Luis was the 104th “U.B.C.” — undocumented border crosser — to be found dead in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert in 2019. Verini offers Luis’s story as a window into the history, circumstances and U.S. policies that have resulted in “a kind of slow-motion epidemic” of migrant deaths in the desert. Customs and Border Protection counts nearly 8,000 deaths along the Southern border since 1998 — an average of about one death per day for the past 22 years. And, as Verini notes, “the real number is probably much higher.”
KJ