Death of migrants at U.S. border causes alert

Crossing the U.S.-Mexico border undocumented has become more dangerous, reflecting an increase in migrant deaths. Last year was the deadliest for migrants crossing the border, with 728 deaths recorded, according to data from the United Nations, which has documented these cases since 2014.No however, this year is at the same pace as the grim record of 2021, as the UN has counted 340 deaths. In Arizona, deaths last year were the highest in four decades, according to local coroners. In San Diego, Scripps Mercy Hospital reported a five-fold increase in the number of migrants injured by accidents at the border wall, this after Donald Trump ordered it to be raised, according to data shared with the agency Reuters.La Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP, for its acronym in English) acknowledged in a statement an “increase in the number of deaths” and blamed human traffickers for not having ” consideration for human lives” by abandoning migrants in remote and dangerous areas. Following congressional mandates, CBP last year changed the way it documents migrant deaths along the border to include only those who die in custody, during arrests or when agents were nearby. Migrant deaths while crossing the U.S. border have increased. Photo: Cuartoscuro The agency told Reuters there were 151 “CBP-related” deaths in fiscal year 2021, a number not previously reported. Bodies discovered by CBP or other corporations are not currently included in the UN data. One of Donald Trump’s signature policies that President Joe Biden has not overturned so far allows border agents to expressly eject migrants across the border into Mexico.An unintended consequence: many simply cross over and over again, often making increasingly risky decisions to avoid detection. Brothers Mariano, 32, and Begai Santiago, 33, originally from a small town in Oaxaca, were on their way to Atlanta, Georgia, in search of work. U.S. officials rejected them twice, but continued to try to cross the border.” He told me they were going to try one last time, the third time,” Mariano’s wife, Estrella Cuevas, told Reuters. The death of 53 migrants in a trailer in Texas has been one of the worst immigration tragedies in recent years. Photo: EFE The third time they crossed undetected and then took a truck with a trailer full of dozens of other migrants heading to San Antonio.Mariano died, was one of 53 victims of the tragedy in the Texas trailer on June 27, the deadliest human trafficking incident in recent U.S. history. Begai survived to recover at a San Antonio hospital.The brothers were identified in part because U.S. authorities had records of their previous crosses. Since 2020, when the so-called Title 42 was implemented at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, in the Trump era, some 2 million migrants have been immediately expelled to their nations or to Mexican territory. Read: Francisco Garduño, director of the National Institute of Migration (INM), said Mexican migrants now try to cross on average four times and some more than a dozen times. An injured migrant cannot be expelled under Title 42 because he is considered vulnerable, said Mexico’s consul in San Diego, Carlos Gonzalez, who has admitted that the increase in deaths trying to cross the wall has been increasing.



Original source in Spanish