Sheriffs are collecting horrific photos of the bodies of migrants near the U.S.-Mexico boundary, looking to shock the country into action to deal with the chaotic southern border.
The National Sheriffs’ Association’s compendium of photos puts images of real people on the mounting carnage. The sheriffs call the collection “Death in the Desert.” It comes with a bright red warning of graphic content.
Some photos show human bones covered in tattered clothing with skin and organs peeled away by animals or the elements. Others show bodies pulled from the Rio Grande, sloughing off their bloated skin after days submerged in the water. One ghoulish shot shows a body shredded into several pieces after the migrant was hit by a train.
“We really need for everyone to understand that this is occurring,” said Sheriff Urbino “Benny” Martinez of Brooks County, Texas.
As of last week, his county had recovered 80 bodies this year. He hoped the body count would stay below last year’s record of 119.
Sheriff Martinez said what he sees would shock communities up north whose leaders complain about migrants being bused or flown into their cities.
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“We receive them at this point here at their worst. The area in the northeastern corner of the United States, guess what, they’re cleaned up,” he said. “We’re the ones that pick them up with maggots on them. That’s what we see. The bodies being torn up. There’s nothing good about this at all, period.”
The scope of death is one of the most visible signs of border chaos.
The Border Patrol set a record in 2021 by tallying 557 migrant deaths.
Fox News, citing internal government data, reported that the fiscal year 2022 number blew that away by reaching 856 deaths from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022.
Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, would not confirm that number. The agency said it would release the tally once its office of professional responsibility collects the statistics.
CBP did acknowledge the growing death toll and blamed the smuggling organizations.
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“Transnational criminal organizations continue to recklessly endanger the lives of individuals they smuggle for their own financial gain with no regard for human life,” the agency said in a statement. “Smuggling organizations are abandoning migrants in remote and dangerous areas, leading to a rise in the number of rescues but also tragically a rise in the number of deaths.”
The number of those rescues — another measure of the level of danger at the border — surged from 12,875 in 2021 to 22,461 in 2022.
In 2019, during the migrant surge that bedeviled the Trump administration, the Border Patrol tallied just 5,071 rescues.
The National Sheriffs’ Association said the rising number of deaths is a result of the Biden administration’s policies.
“It is inhumane to knowingly encourage hope when death is very possible,” the organization said. “Our country needs immigrants, but we need them here legally and on a path to citizenship.”
The worst migrant incident in memory happened last year when 53 died after being trapped in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio. The truck’s refrigeration unit was broken, and temperatures outside reached 100 degrees. Among the dead migrants were three children.
Two men were charged with smuggling in that incident, and two more were charged as illegal immigrants in possession of firearms after authorities found them at one of the addresses they went to search during their investigation.
The Justice Department informed the court Monday that it would not seek the death penalty against the two men charged with smuggling.
Heat and exposure are also the big killers in Brooks County.
The county is home to the Falfurrias checkpoint, part of the network of checkpoints that Border Patrol agents use as a sort of secondary border, inspecting vehicle traffic to try to keep drugs and illegal immigrants penned up closer to the international boundary.
Smugglers must decide whether to try to sneak through the checkpoint undetected, or drop off the migrants before the checkpoint and have them walk around it to be picked up on the northern side. The trek can take anywhere from a few hours to days. In Brooks County, it means going through some of the roughest ranchlands.
Migrants who can’t keep up are often abandoned by smugglers.
Sheriff Martinez said deaths are so routine that his office has forged a working relationship with consulates to help identify bodies.
He said he is hopeful that the number of fatalities in his county will stay below last year’s record toll now that the weather is turning cooler.
Exposure is also a major factor in deaths in Arizona and California, where migrants cross remote landscapes.
At the border in southern Texas, drownings claim lives.
All across the border, migrants are dying in vehicle crashes as smugglers pack people into cars and trucks and drive recklessly as they rush deeper into the country.
An illegal immigrant from Guatemala pleaded guilty this summer to smashing up a Nissan Pathfinder with 15 other migrants riding inside — or twice the seating capacity. Four migrants were dead on the scene.
The driver, David Gonzalez-Diaz, said he was earning $200 per person he transported from the border in western Texas to Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Other deaths probably won’t register in CBP’s statistics.
On the northern border, Canadian authorities recovered the bodies of four Indian nationals who froze to death while trying to sneak into Minnesota during a January whiteout. The family was just yards away from crossing the boundary.
U.S. border agents figured out something was wrong after catching a group of people and realizing they were carrying a backpack with toddler clothes and supplies — but no toddler was in the group.
They began searching on the U.S. side and alerted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who found the mother, father, 11-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy.
An investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. tracked the Patel family’s movements and concluded that they paid smugglers to carry them from a comfortable middle-class life in Gujarat, India, to Canada, where they intended to sneak into the U.S.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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