Crossing From Mexico Is Deadly Study Finds Hundreds Drown In Efforts To Ford Rio Grande

A University of Houston study says 1,185 illegal immigrants died trying to enter the United States from Mexico from 1993 to 1996, two-thirds of them by drowning.

The study, titled “Death at the Border,” found that 844 people, mostly Mexican men in their early 20s, died along Texas’ 890-mile border with Mexico.

Another 261 died along the California-Mexico border, many in auto-pedestrian accidents and some by drowning. Sixty-nine died in Arizona and 11 in New Mexico.

Texas’ border, about half the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, is formed by the Rio Grande, whose flow often looks placid but is unpredictable.

More than 90 percent of the Texas-Mexico border deaths were drownings.

The count is conservative, said sociologist Jacqueline Hagan, co-author of the study with Nestor Rodriguez and Karl Eschbach of the University of Houston Center for Immigration Research. She said some bodies are washed to sea or remain lost in the desert. Death records often are incomplete, especially in sparsely populated counties without a medical examiner.

Hagan said an increasing number of immigrants die miles from the border, usually while trying to bypass the Border Patrol’s inland checkpoints.

The number of deaths may rise, Hagan said, as popular immigration routes are sealed off by increased patrols. xxxx
RECOMMENDATIONS Devise better and more uniform records of migrant deaths for use by Congress in setting immigration policy. Review enforcement policies that channel immigrants into dangerous routes. Issue warnings in Mexican communities near the border and patrol dangerous routes with helicopters carrying rescue and medical equipment.