Death at the US-Mexico Border

Abstract

Hundreds of Mexicans, Central Americans, and other migrants die annually at the US-Mexico border when they attempt to enter the United States without visas by trekking across desert terrain, or by swimming across the Rio Grande River dividing Texas and Mexico border. After the US Border Patrol, in order to halt illegal crossings, closed down in the 1990s the safest border crossing points used by unauthorized migrants, usually near urban centers, the undocumented migrant flow, often organized by coyotes (smugglers), was redirected to dangerous border areas where migrants die from heat exposure, thirst, drownings, assaults, automobile accidents, and so forth. Research in the late 1990s by sociologists at the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston (Eschbach, et al. 1999, cited under General Overviews) introduced the topic of “border deaths” in policy discussions of US immigration, as well as created the subfield of migrant deaths in undocumented migration research. Several studies (e.g., see Regional Analysis) have been conducted since the mid-1990s, addressing the occurrence of migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border, but the subfield is still in a nascent stage due to the difficulty in obtaining migrant mortality data collected with consistent research methods using standardized death classification criteria. Nonetheless, the US Border Patrol has reported annual counts at the US-Mexico border since 1998 (see US Border Patrol death statistics cited under Government Documents). US studies of migrant deaths at the border do not usually include data of migrant deaths on the Mexican side of the border, resulting in undercounts of migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border region. The numbers of these deaths on the Mexican border side may have increased significantly since 2005 after criminal groups in Mexico started kidnapping and murdering migrants crossing Mexico. A recent development in the topic of migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border has been attempts to identify the remains of migrant fatalities through forensic science in order to help relatives locate their missing migrant family members (e.g., see forensic articles in Forensic Science and Public Health Perspective). Humanitarian organizations and analysts have addressed the issue of how migrant deaths represent violation of the human rights of migrants by the implementation of a US border control policy that does not adequately consider the fatal risks created for the undocumented migration flow into the United States.