[Rockstar]

Democrats fomenting hate scoffed at the idea of a border wall. They don’t work they proclaimed. My only thought why that might be, is because they are all professional grave diggers and business is boomin’!

‘It’s Like a Graveyard’: Record Numbers of Migrants Are Dying at the U.S. Border
More men, women and children are trying to navigate dangerous waters and isolated terrain to evade authorities

By Santiago PérezFollow
and Alicia A. CaldwellFollow
| Photographs by Paul Ratje for The Wall Street Journal
March 17, 2023 at 10:45 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/illegal...eaths-c35cf892

EAGLE PASS, Texas—Local officials keep a refrigerated truck to hold the bodies of migrants who drown in the currents of the Rio Grande while trying to cross the border into the U.S.

Across the river, families having picnics or walking along the waterfront promenade of Piedras Negras, Mexico, say they sometimes see bodies floating by or bobbing among the reeds under a bridge. “We had times when we received four or five bodies a week,” said Hugo González, owner of Funerarias González in Piedras Negras. “At one point, there were a lot of corpses and there was nowhere to put them. We just didn’t have enough refrigerators at the funeral home.”

A spike in deaths along the most dangerous stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border reflects the escalating number of migrants seeking to cross into the U.S. from troubled home countries. At the same time, U.S. immigration policies are allowing fewer of them legal entry. Many migrants have turned to human smugglers and WhatsApp messages to help them navigate more lightly patrolled—and treacherous—sections of the border to enter illegally, U.S. officials said.

The bodies of more than 890 migrants, a record number, were recovered by U.S. authorities along the border in the 2022 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to the Biden administration, a 58% increase over 2021. They drowned in fast-moving sections of the Rio Grande or, after successfully crossing, died falling from cliffs along mountain passes or from dehydration while lost, said U.S. border agents and police who recover the bodies. Hundreds more were reported missing. In July, 53 migrants were found dead inside the back of a sweltering tractor trailer found parked in San Antonio. U.S. and Mexican authorities estimate that dozens also died last year on the Mexico side of the border or were lost at sea.

U.S. Border Patrol agents made a record 2.2 million arrests along the 1,958-mile border in the 2022 fiscal year, up from 1.65 million arrests in 2021. In the 245-mile section of the border that federal authorities identify as the Del Rio Sector in Texas, which includes Eagle Pass, there were 481,000 apprehensions in fiscal 2022, an 85% increase over the previous year. Many of the arrests were in Eagle Pass’s Maverick County, population 58,000.

The Del Rio Sector is one of the most perilous places to cross the Rio Grande. Currents below the surface are strong enough to sweep away logs, cattle and people. Even experienced rescuers face risks in this stretch of the river, which claimed the lives of as many as 250 migrants last year, U.S. and Mexican officials said.

First responders in Eagle Pass have reported finding as many as 30 bodies a month in the river since March 2022, according to a federal government filing. “It’s like a graveyard,” said Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber, who grew up in the area. “I’ve been working on the border for almost four decades and never saw tragedies of this magnitude.”

There also was a surge in the number of dead and missing migrants who tried to cross the Caribbean to the U.S. from Haiti and Cuba, according to the United Nations migration agency, which tallied 256 deaths at sea last year. The U.S. Coast Guard recovered the bodies of 65 migrants in the Caribbean and off the coast of Florida in the 2022 fiscal year, compared with five in 2021. On the West Coast, the bodies of eight people were found in the sea and along the shore of San Diego last weekend, after a pair of open fishing boats suspected of smuggling migrants to the U.S. capsized. A Spanish speaking woman who called 911 from one of the boats said the vessel carried 15 people. No survivors were found.

Border agents, human rights advocates and local officials say riskier crossings were driven in part by Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allowed border patrol agents to quickly expel migrants. Previously, migrants who were apprehended were more likely to be released in the U.S. to await a court hearing on their request for asylum.


The Biden administration in January added more countries to the Title 42 restrictions and, in a separate measure, announced that migrants caught trying to cross the border illegally would soon be barred from requesting asylum in the U.S. if they didn’t ask for asylum in countries they crossed en route. The administration said it expected an increase in illegal immigration when Title 42 ends in May with expiration of the national emergency for Covid-19. The government said the new rule for asylum seekers is aimed at deterring migrants from using smugglers and taking more risky routes.

“These actions alone that I’m going to announce today aren’t going to fix our entire immigration system, but they can help us a good deal in better managing what is a difficult challenge,” President Biden said when unveiling the changes.

Human-rights groups are skeptical the policies will help. “Putting obstacles in the way of migration doesn’t stop it, but it does make it more dangerous,” said Dana Graber, who leads the Mexico unit of the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.

Republican lawmakers have said Mr. Biden has failed to properly enforce immigration laws, and many have pushed for more detentions and faster deportations.

Panama this week reported that more than 49,000 migrants from Haiti, Ecuador and China crossed into their country in January and February, compared with around 9,000 during the same period last year. Most said they were headed to the U.S., according to local officials.

Fatal crossing

Irma Huete, her 3-year-old daughter Sofía Caballero and Ms. Huete’s brother Nolvin Huete left Nicaragua on May 10, a month before Sofia’s fourth birthday. The girl’s father had reached the U.S. a few months earlier and was working at an auto body shop in Wisconsin. Once across the border, migrants often take a bus or a flight to meet relatives or acquaintances, largely in communities where low-skill jobs are available.

After traveling 2,000 miles through Central America and Mexico, Ms. Huete and her family stood in the dark with a group of migrants on the Mexico side of the Rio Grande, across from Eagle Pass. She sent a hopeful message to her mother-in-law in Nicaragua: They were only a few yards away from the U.S.

Migrants who had earlier made it across shared the riverbank location via WhatsApp with others heading north to the border, local officials and U.S. Border Patrol agents said.

Smugglers had promised a raft to Ms. Huete’s group for crossing the Rio Grande, but there was none when they arrived. Instead, the smugglers assembled a group of about 100 migrants, most of them from Central America, and formed a human chain to wade across a shallower stretch of the river, based on accounts survivors gave Mexican state authorities and Fundación para la Justicia, a Mexico-based human rights group.

Mr. Huete put Sofía on his shoulders, and Ms. Huete followed him into the waters, according to state authorities in Mexico. About 35 feet from the U.S. side, Mr. Huete lost his footing and passed Sofía to Ms. Huete before the current swept him away. The river carried him about 350 feet, and he was able to cross into the U.S., migrants who were with him told Fundación para la Justicia.

Ms. Huete and her daughter also were caught in the current and swept away. Ms. Huete’s body was found at dawn, on the Mexico side of the bank, officials said. Sofía remains missing.

“We’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of migrants who lost their lives in this area,” said Víctor Rodríguez, the chief prosecutor for the northern region in Mexico’s Coahuila state where Piedras Negras is located.

In April, a Texas National Guard soldier drowned trying to help rescue migrants across the river. Last month, Mexican officials sighted an Ecuadorean woman on an embankment under the bridge from Piedras Negras to Eagle Pass. She had her 5-year-old son in her lap. The child’s father, who had tried to cross with them, was taken by the current.

There also have been dozens of migrant deaths upriver in the Big Bend Sector of southwest Texas. It is another favored destination because it is isolated and more lightly patrolled than other crossing points. A walk from the border to the nearest U.S. town takes days, passing across craggy mountains and deep canyons. Summer temperatures reach 100 degrees with little shade.

Sean McGoffin, who leads the U.S. Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector said his agents in recent years have been rescuing more migrants in remote, hard-to-reach areas and finding more bodies. “One death is too many,” he said.

Farther west, in Tucson, Ariz., Border Patrol agents logged thousands of rescue calls in the past year from lost or exhausted migrants, including those with life-threatening injuries. Migrants often underestimate the challenge and are ill-prepared for long routes on foot, U.S. and Mexican officials say.

Sheriff Schmerber, of Maverick County, said the work of recovering bodies and trying to identify and repatriate the dead takes time away from law enforcement duties of his 22 officers. “We don’t have enough staff,” he said.

Mass grave

Mr. Gónzalez, owner of the funeral home across the river in Mexico, said about half of the migrants found dead weren’t carrying identification. “Some of them have a phone number hidden on their belt or shoe,” he said. Using the number, he calls to break the news and offer embalming and repatriation.

Mr. González built six mausoleum drawers to temporarily keep as many as 12 bodies at a time, including the unidentified and those unclaimed by relatives. The bodies are later buried in a mass grave at one of Piedras Negras’ municipal graveyards.

The number of migrant deaths reported in the Piedras Negras area doubled last year to nearly 70, and more than 16 people trying to enter the U.S. have been reported missing, according to Familias Unidas, a civic group that searches for missing people.

In mid-January, members of Mexico’s National Guard alerted the rescuers about screams coming from one of the small islets of the Rio Grande between Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass. The Beta team, the Mexican immigration agency’s rescue unit, found three Salvadoran sisters, ages 6, 9 and less than 2 years. Mexican officials suspect the girls were abandoned by migrant smugglers.

Local residents and officials are especially taken by the case of Ms. Huete and her missing daughter, Sofía. The Search Commission of Coahuila state issued an alert with a photo of Sofía, smiling and her hair in two ponytails. Flyers with Sofía’s photo were put up on lampposts and walls around town in the months after she disappeared in the Rio Grande.

Ms. Huete’s mother-in-law, Elia Centeno, said she used to care for Sofia while her parents were working. The purpose of Ms. Huete’s trip to the U.S. was to reunite Sofia with her father.

“If I could, I would give my life to find Sofía,” said Ms. Centeno in a phone call from Nicaragua. “There isn’t a second that I don’t think about her.”