In the last three years, the 2009 period was the most tragic for illegal immigrants.

LAREDO, TX.- In the last three years, the 2009 period was the most tragic for illegal immigrants. In 12 months 49 lives were lost that intended to cross to the United States.

The Mexican Consulate General of this city confirmed that in 2007, 39 illegal immigrants died and 29 for 2008.
In 2008 16 out of 29 died from a heat stroke, 10 drowned in the Rio Bravo, 1 on the railroad tracks and 2 others in divers accidents. Out of the 29 victims, 21 were identified as mexicans.

It is noteworthy to mention that the Mexican Consulate General along with the Border Patrol had prevention campaigns throughout the year with the intent of reducing the death toll.

Migratory authorities have trained personnel to rescue people and for first aid, they also have special equipped vehicles to rescue those they have found in the fields.

Article from the Laredo Sun.

An additional 209 U.S. Border Patrol agents will be in Arizona starting today in an attempt to address border deaths in the Southwest border's deadliest stretch.

The agency's "Operation Guardian" initiative kicks off after the two deadliest months for border deaths — June and July — have already passed.

At least 40 bodies of illegal immigrants were recovered in July across Arizona's stretch of U.S.-Mexico border from New Mexico to Yuma County, and at least 135 bodies have been found along that stretch since Jan. 1, up from 120 at the same time last year, medical examiners' records show.

The agents assigned to the Tucson Sector in the "Operation Guardian," program will be here through September, said Omar Candelaria, a Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. They'll be used primarily in processing centers and at highway checkpoints to free up the other 3,300 full-time agents in the sector.

"It allows us to have a bigger presence out there," Candelaria said. "That will allow our agents that are from the area to be out in the field and reach out to more people."

From Oct. 1 through June, the most up-to-date figures available from the agency, agents in the Tucson Sector had rescued 300 people, he said.

While the extra help is welcome, the initiative is too little, too late, said Robin Hoover, president of Humane Borders, which operates water stations in the desert.

"They are responding kind of late in the game," Hoover said. "The numbers are higher, the rate is higher and the feds are just now responding to it. It looks to me like they don't monitor this situation very closely."
The Arizona Daily Star's border-death database shows that June and July are the two deadliest months for illegal immigrants.

An average of 43 bodies have been recovered each July from 2004-2009, along with 31 bodies each June during that span, the database shows.

August is the third-most dangerous month, with an average of 24 bodies each year from 2004-2008.
When asked about why the program is starting in August and not sooner, Candelaria said, "This is when we were able to get them in here."

Even if the program had begun earlier this summer, simply putting extra agents would not have necessarily made the border safer, Hoover said. The buildup of agents, fences and technology in the last five to 10 years in Arizona has pushed illegal immigrants into more remote and dangerous routes, he said.

The Tucson Sector accounts for half of all bodies found along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the total number of deaths and the rate of death are both up this year compared to past years, the Arizona Daily Star's border death database shows.

The risk of dying is 1.5 times higher today compared with five years ago and 17 times greater than in 1998, the Arizona Daily Star's border-death database shows.

"They rescue a lot of people, but they created the situation in the first place," said Hoover, referring to the fact that he and others say the additional agents have pushed illegal immigrants into more remote and dangerous routes.

Read the entire article by Brady McCombs in the Arizona Daily Star

U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered human skeletal remains east of Sasabe on Friday.

Agents found the remains while patrolling on foot at about 5 p.m, said Omar Candelaria, a U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman.

They found a skull, femur and other assorted bones but were unable to determine the gender of the person by the remains found, Candelaria said.

As reported in the Arizona Daily Star

Reviewed: David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 261 pages, $25.95, hardcover.

In this compelling and useful book, David Bacon lays to rest the anti-immigration arguments of the xenophobes and racists who bombard us every day in the press, on television, and on radio talk shows with the vicious assertion that immigrants, mainly those from Latin America, are the cause of all our economic and social problems.

I will get to Bacon’s arguments shortly, but what makes the book especially good is its interweaving of analysis and individual immigrant biographies. When CNN’s premier immigrant basher, Lou Dobbs, refers every evening to “illegal aliens,” he intentionally depersonalizes them and makes it easier for his audience to accept his demonization of what are, as Bacon indelibly shows us, ordinary and often heroic human beings. Consider these immigrants whose stories Bacon reveals:

Luz Dominguez is a Mexican woman. She came to the United States because she couldn’t support her family in Mexico City. She does backbreaking work cleaning rooms in a California hotel. Her father, after a lifetime of construction labor in Mexico, has come to live with her. She sends money back home so her daughter can attend college. She is undocumented, not through choice but because it is not possible for a person such as herself, an unskilled Mexican woman, to obtain the necessary documents. The United States imposes strict and extremely meager quotas on such potential immigrants. She has been a good citizen in the United States. She works hard, pays her bills, pays taxes, even puts money in a social security account from which she will never be able to withdraw money. The fact that she has a Social Security number but is an undocumented immigrant constitutes, according to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “identity fraud.” She could be deported or sent to prison for this. But as Bacon tells us, “There is no evidence to suggest that the genuine holder of a Social Security number is harmed when someone else uses that number on the job. After all, an employer will be depositing extra money into the true cardholder’s account, and the worker using the incorrect number will never be able to collect the benefits those earnings accrue.” If the number does not belong to anyone, the money deposited in this new account will just go into the Social Security fund. So, ironically, undocumented immigrants are subsidizing the social security system, to the benefit of all of us, including Lou Dobbs.

Juan Gonzalez was a copper miner in Cananea, just seventy miles south of Arizona. Copper mining has a long history in Mexico. The first mines were owned by U.S. companies, but the Mexican government took majority control in the early 1970s. Like all mining, copper production is dangerous work, and the miners struggled long and hard to form unions to protect themselves and secure higher wages. They faced extreme repression, but often in concert with miners in the United States (many of whom are Mexican), they managed to secure some victories. As one miner put it, “When we have problems, there are no borders. We all have to work to survive.”

However, when neoliberalism raised its ugly head in the late 1980s, Mexico’s national industries were placed on the chopping block, sold to wealthy private interests at bargain basement prices. The new owners were Mexican, but they had deep connections with large U.S. corporations, and it was the U.S. government, in league with these same businesses, that had pressured Mexico and scores of other poor countries to introduce the “free market” reforms that are the hallmarks of neoliberalism: cut government social spending, slash employment, privatize national enterprises and public services, attract foreign capital with tax and other concessions, make unionization difficult, and so forth.

Continue reading this review by Michael D. Yates at Monthly Review.

Illegal border crossers face a deadlier trek than ever across Arizona's desert.

The risk of dying is 1.5 times higher today compared with five years ago and 17 times greater than in 1998, the Arizona Daily Star's border-death database shows.

That's a significant increase considering the initial spike of deaths in Arizona occurred in 2000-02.
Through the first seven months of fiscal year 2009, there were 60 known deaths per 100,000 apprehensions in the area covered in the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. That's up from 39 known deaths per 100,000 apprehensions in 2004.

The increased risk of death parallels the historic buildup of agents, fences, roads and technology along the U.S.-Mexico border, calling into question one of the Border Patrol's mantras that a "secure border is a safe border."

Even with 3,300 agents, 210 miles of fences and vehicle barriers, and 40 agents assigned to the agency's search, rescue and trauma team, Borstar, illegal immigrants are still dying while trying to cross the Border Patrol's 262-mile-long Tucson Sector.

Border county law enforcement, Mexican Consulate officials, Tohono O'odham tribal officials and humanitarian groups say the buildup has caused illegal border crossers to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain, increasing the likelihood that people will get hurt or fatigued and left behind to die.

"We are pushing people into more deadly areas," said Kat Rodriguez, coordinating organizer for Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a Tucson-based group that tracks the deaths. "When enforcement goes up, death goes up. We've been saying that for years."

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada and Sgt. David Noland, the Cochise County Sheriff's Office search and rescue coordinator, say body recoveries in their counties show that people are trekking through increasingly remote areas.

The Border Patrol doesn't stop anyone from coming; it only shifts the locations where they cross, said Rev. Robin Hoover, president of Tucson-based Humane Borders. His group's maps show that bodies are being found farther away from principal roads and water sources each year.

"The presence of the Border Patrol makes the average migrant hungrier, thirstier, more tired and sicker," Hoover said.

Border Patrol officials point to their rescue efforts as evidence that their presence prevents deaths rather than causes them.

"Our presence is greater; we are getting to these people sooner," said Robert Boatright, deputy chief of the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. The agency rescued 160 people through mid-May, compared with 151 at the same time last year.

He attributes the continued rise in deaths to better recovery methods and more thorough record-keeping.
"When somebody loses a loved one, a lot of times we're getting better information back and going back and finding those," Boatright said.

The agency concentrates its agents and rescue teams in the desert west of Sasabe, where most of the bodies are found, to move them out of the most dangerous areas, he said.

Continue reading this story by Brady McCombs in the Arizona Daily Star