The United Nations on Tuesday declared the U.S.-Mexico border the most lethal land crossing in the world, adding another grim superlative to President Biden’s immigration record.
The International Organization for Migration, the U.N. immigration watchdog, tallied 686 deaths and disappearances last year and said that’s probably an undercount because many deaths go unreported.
Hundreds more died in the Caribbean while trying to reach the U.S.
The IOM declared the death rate a “humanitarian emergency of great dimension.”
Figures from the Homeland Security Department indicate that this year is shaping up to be even worse.
The Border Patrol’s El Paso, Texas, sector said last week that its death toll had nearly doubled, from 71 at this point in fiscal 2022 to 131 in 2023.
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The United Nations said its numbers showed a dip from 2021 to 2022 but attributed it to missing data from Texas border county coroners and from Mexico’s search-and-rescue agency.
Michele Klein Solomon, the IOM’s regional director for North and Central America, said governments must improve data collection and take “decisive action” to stop the deaths.
“Ultimately, what is needed is for countries to act on the data to ensure safe, regular migration routes are accessible,” she said.
The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this report.
The number of migrant deaths is one of several morbid yardsticks for the deterioration of U.S. border security under Mr. Biden. Others are rising numbers of terrorism suspects entering the country and historic levels of fentanyl overdose deaths.
Customs and Border Protection keeps a close hold on borderwide numbers, but its most recent public data dates back to 2021.
The agency has highlighted some troubling cases in recent weeks, including a Honduran woman caught sneaking into the U.S. with her two children on Aug. 27 near Hidalgo, Texas.
She was found unresponsive in a Border Patrol holding cell the following day. Fellow migrants realized something was wrong when they heard one of the children’s cries.
CBP officials said medical personnel screened the woman twice before she was put into the cell with other families on the morning of Aug. 28. She was seen on video stepping out of the cell at 11:45 a.m. and was not noticed again until the distress call at 3:58 p.m.
Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller called it a “terrible incident” and vowed to evaluate the agency’s detention policies.
“We will look to the results of this investigation for additional steps to ensure the safety and well-being of those in our custody as needed,” he said.
Texas, meanwhile, reported that a 3-year-old girl from Venezuela died last month aboard one of the state’s buses carrying migrants to Democratic-run cities across the country.
Jismay Alejandra Barboza Gonzalez was born in Colombia to Venezuelan parents. The family left Colombia in May and traveled through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala to Mexico. They tried to sign up for the Biden administration’s new “parole” program to allow unauthorized migrants to use U.S. ports of entry if they schedule their arrivals.
In a GoFundMe page raising money after Jismay’s death, family members said they could not get an appointment so they decided to jump the border. They were caught and released and took up Texas’ offer for a bus ride to Chicago. Jismay died en route.
The family made it through some of the most perilous territory in the Western Hemisphere, including the Darien Gap, a treacherous jungle between Colombia and Panama where nature and criminal gangs take their toll.
The IOM report said 141 migrants were reported missing or dead in the Darien, though officials said the actual number is undoubtedly higher. Surveys of people who crossed the gap reported that 1 in 25 said at least one of their travel companions disappeared in the Darien.
Roughly 250,000 people are estimated to have made the Darien crossing in 2022, and the number is already nearly 340,000 in 2023, the IOM said.
The U.S.-Mexico border can kill in many ways: Rio Grande drownings, vehicle crashes involving speeding smugglers and falls from the border wall. The most potent force is weather: the extreme cold of winter or scorching heat of summer.
IOM said the Chihuahua and Sonora deserts accounted for the largest share of deaths.
CBP said in a statement to The Times that it takes the issue seriously and has placed rescue beacons along migration routes and has teams of agents trained for search-and-rescue missions.
The agency said migrants need to take heed of what they might face.
“Crossing the border illegally is inherently dangerous. CBP urges migrants to seek lawful pathways into the United States and not to place their lives in the hands of human smugglers, whose priority is profit,” the agency said.
Although CBP lags in reporting on deaths, it delivers monthly updates on “rescues.” Through July, or 10 months into fiscal year 2023, the Border Patrol tallied 28,537 rescues, already well ahead of the previous record set last year of 22,075.
In 2020, the last year under President Trump, when total border crossings were substantially lower, CBP recorded 5,072 rescues.
Trying to reduce the number of border deaths is one of the few areas of agreement in an immigration debate otherwise lacking in common ground.
How to get there remains deeply divisive.
Those who favor strict adherence to border security say the deaths are a matter of math. If more migrants are coming to the U.S. border, then more will die trying. The humane solution is to change the policies that draw a record number of people to make the dangerous journey.
Immigration rights activists say the policies needed to tamp down the flow of people are too cruel. They point to the turn of the century when migrants responded to tough approaches in urban areas by turning to remote border areas, and death rates rose.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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