Death on the Border

Tucson

Now that a summerlong Homeland Security crackdown along the Arizona border is concluding, the results are in and they spell lethal failure. Since the fiscal year began last October 1, the statewide toll has reached a record 164 migrants perishing while trying to cross into the United States.

Already in August, when I headed out with US Border Patrol search and rescue specialist Jim Chism on his daily routine an hour southwest of here, he could sense that this "season of death" was going to be as grim as ever. "No one should have to die for entering the United States without papers. It shouldn't be the death penalty," he said as we followed the trail of a group of migrants through a jumble of lava-hot volcanic rock, mesquite, greasewood and cat's-claw brush in triple-digit heat. Chism feared the group we were following was lost and facing dehydration and sunstroke. "Looks like a group of seven," he said, intensely studying the foot tracks. "In this heat you can only carry enough water for thirty-five to forty miles, then you start drinking out of ponds, contaminated irrigation water and finally your own urine. And then you die." We never found the group, who may have been a day ahead of us.

Agent Chism was but one piece of the Bush Administration's much-ballyhooed $25 million-plus Arizona Border Control (ABC) operation, which began in March and which was supposed to curb the flow of undocumented aliens and save the lives of desperate desert-crossers. The Border Patrol had been praising the program as effective and consistently reporting a decline in deaths until local reporters--led by the Arizona Republic--learned that the government had changed its accounting methods to downplay fatalities; they compiled their own independent count. The Border Patrol acknowledged it was accurate. The ABC initiative included the deployment of scores of additional Border Patrol agents, Black Hawk helicopters and even aerial drones to try to stem the flow. A $13 million program to repatriate apprehended crossers deep within Mexico on two daily flights was aimed at reducing repeat-crossers and lowering the death count.

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