BORDER ISSUES

How many people die trying to cross the border?

The Republic | azcentral.com
Bodies and remains of migrants found in southern Arizona are taken to the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office in Tucson, Arizona.

How many people die trying to cross the border?

It’s impossible to know precisely how many people die trying to cross the border, because many who die haven’t been found and some may never be found. In addition, there is no single system for tracking migrant deaths.

The Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants documented 2,832 migrant deaths from 2001 through Aug. 10, 2017, using records from the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. The office conducts autopsies on remains found in the southern Arizona counties of Santa Cruz and Cochise, in addition to Pima. But migrants increasingly die crossing in other border states, including Texas, New Mexico and California. The Border Patrol tracks deceased migrants found by its agents but not those reported to other agencies. According to Border Patrol statistics, agents found 6,915 deceased migrants along the entire southwestern border from fiscal year 1998 through fiscal year 2016. The Tucson Sector was the deadliest, with a total of 3,654 deceased migrants found by Border Patrol agents over that period.

In addition to migrant deaths, hundreds and possibly thousands of migrants remain missing. The Colibri Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona, collects DNA samples and other information from relatives of missing migrants in an attempt to identify the remains that have been found. The information is also stored to help identify remains in the future. As of August 2017, the center had more than 2,454 open cases border-wide and had helped identify over 100 migrants.

— Daniel González

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