By The Opinion
17 Oct 2024, 2:51 PM EDT
The border between the United States and Mexico is listed as the most dangerous land crossing in the world, according to the International Organization for Migration. Although migrant arrests at that border have decreased so far this year, the number of deaths has increased in that same region.
The government of Mexico reports a sharp decline in daily border apprehensionsmore than 70 percent since December 2023. Meanwhile, irregular migration rose 193 percent year-on-year in just the first half of the year, according to the Migration Policy Unit.
The head of the Migrant Assistance Division of the State Population Council in Chihuahua, Dirvin Luis García, assures that “The mobility trend towards this containment policy is generating alternative and often more unsafe routes in transit. ”. And the barriers and surveillance have multiplied on the border, with metal mesh, barbed wire and a large number of armed agents.
Extreme surveillance in El Paso, Texas, by the Border Patrol and the National Guard, has forced migrants to take highly dangerous alternative routes.
According to the Esperanza Border Institute, they are 174 migrants have died so far in 2024 when trying to cross the desert or the river, a figure higher than in 2023, when 113 dead people were found by agents in areas near the border line.
“But it is only the official figure, we know that Many people will never be able to find each other because they die in very remote areas.in the desert, or they get lost in the river and we never find their bodies, so the real number is double or triple,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Esperanza Border Institute, told the newspaper Milenio.
In addition, extreme weather conditions have caused many migrant deathssince the majority are not used to the intense cold or the heat and lack of water that they experience during their journey in the desert, which causes dehydration, one of the main causes of death.
In addition to this, the “polleros” transport migrants inside the boxes of cargo trucks, in inhumane conditions, as demonstrated by the arrests recorded by the Border Patrol in El Paso or in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
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