Migrants regularly die in searing Arizona heat, but the desert often claims the remains and death toll is uncertain
Benjamin Adelberg
/Cronkite News
July 23, 2024
Volunteers for No More Deaths leave water for migrants. The humanitarian organization is based in southern Arizona. (File photo by Rebecca Spiess/Cronkite News)
WASHINGTON – James Holeman’s first encounter with the deadly toll that illegal migration takes came in August 2018 on his first patrol with Aguilas del Desierto, a group devoted to rescuing missing migrants.
It’s a gruesome reality for volunteers whose goal is to save lives. They don’t reach everyone in time.
His small group was assigned to scour an area called Growler Valley, about 30 miles from Ajo – his home – and 75 miles from Yuma. They found two sites with human bones that day – 13 individuals desperate enough to brave some of the most unforgiving terrain in the country.
“The desert is very efficient at making people disappear,” Holeman said. “The people that die there often don’t have somebody looking for them, but they still matter.”
More than half the deaths among migrants in the Americas occur in the U.S.-Mexico border region, according to the International Organization for Migration. IOM called it the deadliest land crossing in the world in 2021.
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2024/07/23/arizona-heat-desert-migrants-death-toll-uncertain/
