All-time high migrant death rate along US-Mexico border: prevention in immigration reform? [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Last edited Wed Sep 24, 2014, 12:49 AM - Edit history (1)

All-time high migrant death rate along US-Mexico border: prevention in immigration reform?

Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on March 28, 2013

According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 477 individuals died along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2012 during their attempt to enter the U.S. That’s an all-time high rate of 13.3 deaths per 10,000 CBP apprehensions. It compares to a rate of 8 deaths per 10,000 in 2010, and 4 per 10,000 in 2005.

The data was assembled by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) in the policy brief “How many more deaths? The moral case for a temporary worker program.” At a time when fewer migrants are attempting to enter the U.S. illegally, the author attributes the escalating death rate to two related factors: (1) the lack of legal temporary visas for low-skilled workers; and (2) the build-up of enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Reading this recently released report reminded me of the policy statement Border Crossing Deaths: A Public Health Crisis Along the US–Mexico Border adopted in 2009 by the American Public Health Association (APHA). It also pointed a finger at the “militarization of the US–Mexico border” for migrants’ deaths.

“The Border Patrol’s policy of ‘prevention through deterrence’ has resulted in the purposeful displacement and diversion of migrants into more treacherous and dangerous zones to cross, such as deserts, rivers, canals, and rugged terrain. …[T]hese border deterrence operations serve to prevent migrants from crossing in well-established urban corridors where they historically have relied on familiar networks for assistance and instead deflect migrants to more remote rural areas where they are exposed to greater dangers and the risk of death, especially in the harsher environments of deserts and mountains. [font size=3] …In their quest to evade U.S. enforcement operations in well-established urban crossing areas, migrants are squeezed into remote areas where they are exposed to the extreme elements of deserts and mountains and suffer dehydration, hyperthermia, hypothermia, and drowning.”
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More:
http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/03/28/all-time-high-migrant-death-rate-along-us-mexico-border-prevention-in-immigration-reform/