Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just released updated data on migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border, and the results are staggering. At least 895 people died at the border during fiscal year 2022, a 57 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. This grim statistic makes 2022 the deadliest year on record for migrants trying to reach the United States, and the figure may be an undercount.
For years, CBP has blamed the persistent rise in deaths on three factors: the summer heat, the rugged desert terrain and the cruelty of smugglers. who let migrants die there.
In fact, climate change has made summers hotter and drier, meaning that migrants who spend days or weeks walking through remote stretches of the desert are more likely to become dehydrated and, if exposed to the sun for long enough, succumb to the exposure. But rising temperatures do not explain why migrants cross such dangerous parts of border areas, often dying in the process. The real culprit is the vast surveillance apparatus that funnels migrants – including people seeking asylum – into what CBP itself calls “hostile terrain.”
In November 2021, a month into fiscal year 2022, CBP gave me a tour of its surveillance infrastructure in the Tucson Border Patrol Sector, which spans more than 90,000 square miles and where, over the next 11 months, at At least 142 migrants would arrive. lose your life. I watched as CBP tracked a group of 11 migrants with a Predator drone and took a look at the remote cameras that allow agents to monitor human movement across the desert from an air-conditioned office building. Later, while walking through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument with a local environmental activist, a Border Patrol agent approached us and said he had seen us on one of the cameras.
CBP’s network of surveillance towers, hidden cameras, aerial drones and aerial sensors is the result of a law enforcement strategy called “prevention through deterrence.”
The policy, which was implemented in the mid-1990s, initially aimed to accumulate labor in heavily trafficked areas of the border. At the time, most immigrants entered the United States through cities; They scaled the fence that divided Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, for example. In response, the Border Patrol flooded cities along the border with agents to discourage migrants from crossing. Those who tried would be pushed into “more hostile terrain, less suitable for crossing and more suitable for law enforcement,” the Border Patrol said. 1994 strategic plan read.
“A significant correlation between the location of border surveillance technology, the routes taken by migrants and the location of human remains recovered in the southern Arizona desert”
Thirty years later, the plan has worked, although it has not actually reduced migration. Instead, as the 1994 plan predicted, he simply changed the location of the crossings. Surveillance tools allow Border Patrol to track migrants across vast stretches of the border without having to be there; the agency considers them a “force multiplier.” But the expansion of CBP's surveillance apparatus has come at a significant human cost. A 2019 study A study by researchers at the University of Arizona found a “significant correlation between the location of border surveillance technology, the routes taken by migrants, and the locations of human remains recovered in the southern Arizona desert.”
Migrants don't always know the tools CBP uses to track them through the desert, but smugglers certainly do, which is why they encourage migrants to enter the U.S. through remote and dangerous routes where they are less likely to that are intercepted by Border Patrol agents. but you are much more likely to die.
Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allowed CBP to expel migrants back to Mexico without a hearing, may also have had a compounding effect that exacerbated the huge death toll in 2022. The policy was introduced ostensibly to limit the spread of Covid-19, but was, for both the Trump and Biden administrations, a de facto anti-immigration measure. deterrence strategy.
As a result of Title 42 During the expulsions, some asylum seekers who would otherwise have turned themselves in to Border Patrol at the first possible opportunity attempted to evade detection, sometimes because they had already been expelled to Mexico, where they faced significant danger. CBP Southwest Border Law Enforcement Report for fiscal year 2021 notes that the high number of encounters that year “was driven in part by high recidivism rates among people prosecuted under Title 42 by public health authorities.” In other words, some migrants who were expelled under Title 42 tried to cross the border again and again until they succeeded, or until the harsh desert terrain forced them to give up. In 2022, the Border Patrol carried out more than 938,000 expulsions of single adult migrants and 116,000 expulsions of family groups, according to the agency's report. data.
Of the 895 deaths listed for 2022, 131 were listed as partial “skeletal remains,” meaning the death could have occurred at any time. If we leave them out of the 2022 count, that's still 764 confirmed deaths over a 12-month period, most of which were due to exposure or drowning.
The confluence of Title 42, record heat, and the continued expansion of CBP's surveillance capabilities provided a perfect storm for migrant deaths in 2022. Title 42 was rescinded last year, but the bipartisan border bill that the Congress spent months debating included a provision that would effectively close the border, Title 42-style, whenever the number of encounters exceeds a certain threshold. Meanwhile, border enforcement isn't going away anytime soon. In fact, CBP's next goal is a “unified view of unauthorized movement” across the US-Mexico border.
If the recent past is any indication, increased surveillance will not reduce migration. Their body count, however, will continue to grow.
