Border Policy: The Deadly Funnel

The University of Arizona's Mexican-American Studies Dept. has released a report, in conjunction with the American Immigration Law Foundation, highlighting the humanitarian crisis experienced along the U.S./Mexico Border

For almost a decade now, there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of deaths each year among unauthorized border-crossers in the deserts and mountains of southern Arizona. The official statistics compiled by the U.S. Border Patrol consistently undercount the actual number of deaths in Arizona and elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border. But various academic and government studies estimate that the bodies of between 2,000 and 3,000 men, women, and children have been found along the entire southwest border since 1995, including at least 1,000 in the inhospitable terrain of southern Arizona. Experts, including the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), now explain this crisis as a direct consequence of U.S. immigration-control policies instituted in the mid-1990s.¹

The Binational Migration Institute (BMI) of the University of Arizona's Mexican American Studies and Research Center has undertaken a unique and scientifically rigorous study of all unauthorized border-crosser (UBC) deaths examined by the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office (PCMEO) from 1990-2005.² [Read the complete BMI study] Because the PCMEO has handled approximately 90 percent of all UBC recovered bodies in the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, an analysis of such deaths serves as an accurate reflection of the major characteristics of all known unauthorized border-crosser deaths that have occurred in this sector since 1990.

Linkage to Policy Brief

More to come later, after I've had a chance to read through the full report. I'm sure I won't be disappointed, though, I highly respect Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith's work.