SUNLAND PARK, NM – In each of the past two summers, Laura Mae Williams, who retrieves bodies for the New Mexico Medical Investigator’s Office, has had to visit the U.S.-Mexico border area several times a week.
“It’s not unusual for me to come in and see one body found, and then Border Patrol finds one or maybe even two more in different locations,” Williams said.
It used to be rare for migrants to die after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the desert just west of El Paso, Texas, across the state line. The Medical Investigator’s Office, part of the University of New Mexico health care system, could only recover a handful of bodies per year. But so far this year, the agency has recovered 121 such sets of remains, breaking last year’s record of 116. It’s more than a thirteenfold increase from five years ago.
Unlike the vast, remote deserts of Arizona, where migrants have been dying in large numbers for years, the area experiencing this spike in deaths is relatively small, hemmed in by highways and El Paso’s western suburbs.
In many cases, people have died within a few feet of suburban neighborhoods and paved roads.
Most deaths are heat-related. Although it is a relatively small stretch of desert, it routinely reaches temperatures well into the triple digits in the summer, with sand temperatures sometimes reaching 150 degrees.
“These extreme conditions are going to be taxing on the body, even if you are well hydrated and well nourished,” Williams said. And in many cases, the people who have migrated are not well hydrated or well nourished, having spent days in poor conditions in smugglers’ safe houses.
First responders, elected officials and advocates in New Mexico attribute the spike in deaths largely to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which hardened the border in El Paso’s urban core and prompted smugglers to take routes west of the city in New Mexico to try.
Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, blamed the federal government for the deaths. “Operation Lone Star helps deter illegal crossings by diverting migrants to one of 29 international bridges on the Texas-Mexico border where they can cross safely and legally,” Mahaleris told NBC News in a statement .
The deaths fit a historical pattern. Migrants often begin dying in greater numbers after enforcement efforts push smuggling routes beyond urban areas to more remote and dangerous intersections.
Officials, including the New Mexico Medical Investigator’s Office, also blame smugglers for the deaths, noting that in many cases they abandon people who fall behind — but only after taking their phones.
“It raises an important question,” said Dr. Heather Jarrell, the lead investigator for the Medical Investigator’s Office, whose office has ruled the deaths accidental. “If you let someone die in the middle of the desert, why isn’t this murder by neglect?”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
