Risky Crossing

May 20, 2002
Aaron J. Latham / Staff
By Tim Steller • ARIZONA DAILY STAR

About 500 migrants per day travel from Altar, Sonora, to the border near Sasabe.
From there, they take paths across some of the most dangerous terrain in Southern Arizona.

Another summer of brutal heat puts migrants at risk

The lack of progress on immigration issues is threatening to chill relations between the United States and Mexico just as killing heat spreads back across the Arizona borderland.

That means border-crossers will likely continue dying of dehydration in Southern Arizona this summer, even though presidents Bush and Fox vowed on May 24 last year to prevent more desert tragedies.

The presidents' joint statement came on the day the last of 14 migrants from a single group was found dead of dehydration in the desert between Ajo and Yuma.

"These tragic deaths highlight the pressing need for our governments to continue their work to reach new agreements on migration and border safety," the joint statement said.

Then another set of tragic deaths intervened on Sept. 11, and progress in negotiating new immigration policies stalled. The impasse led President Fox to issue a warning to the Bush administration earlier this month.

"There cannot be a privileged relationship between the United States and Mexico without real progress on substantive issues on our bilateral agenda," Fox said. "And there cannot be substantive progress without dealing with migration in a comprehensive way."

For now, American politics probably will make such progress impossible, analysts said.

"Mexican President Vicente Fox has drawn a line in the sand that President George W. Bush politically cannot cross," said a May 10 analysis by Stratfor, a Texas company that sells global intelligence reports.

Although Bush has said he considers the issue a priority, it may be too risky to undertake a legalization program before the fall elections, said Deborah Meyers, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

"Presidents rarely make policy changes that would be this controversial when they're trying to win seats in a midterm election," Meyers said.

The Stratfor report concluded that the U.S.-Mexican relationship "will cool in coming months."

It's bad timing for people like Hector Fernandez, a 39-year-old from Oaxaca state in southern Mexico. He and 20 other border-crossers were trekking north through the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson last week when the heat forced them out of the brush.

They started walking near Sasabe, Sonora, on Tuesday, ran out of water at midday Wednesday, and followed the sound of traffic out to Arizona 286 on Thursday, Fernandez said. Border Patrol agents soon passed by and provided water before detaining them.

"Walking through the desert with just a little water is hard," Fernandez said. "We couldn't take any more."

His group was lucky - it made it out of the desert with only one relatively minor health problem. A woman in the group fainted during the second day of the walk but recovered enough by the third day to walk out to the highway.

Since Oct. 1, 2000, 98 border-crossers are known to have died in Southern Arizona between New Mexico and the Yuma County line. That does not count the 14 migrants who died in May last year. They were among the 26 known to have died in the Border Patrol's Yuma Sector over the same period.

In the Yuma Sector, heat caused all but two of the known deaths since Oct. 1, 2000. But in the Tucson Sector, heat was simply the leading cause of death among several factors. Over the same period, 47 of the 98 deaths in the Tucson Sector were caused by heat; 14 by vehicular crashes; 13 by exposure to cold.

The weather during the next month or so is expected to be especially conducive to more migrant deaths. The National Weather Service issued a report Thursday saying all of southeast Arizona is under extreme drought conditions.

That means the little surface water that migrants have sometimes found in Southern Arizona - usually in stock tanks - will probably be absent until thunderstorms return. To make matters worse, atmospheric signs suggest those thunderstorms may be late in arriving this year, the weather service said.

One good sign has emerged: The Border Patrol has made 36 percent fewer apprehensions in Southern Arizona this year than last. The agency interprets this to mean fewer people are crossing the border in this area than in the last two years.

But traffic is steady enough in the dangerous areas of the border southwest of Tucson to worry the Border Patrol as well as Mexican officials.

In February, the agency increased its flights over the Tohono O'odham Nation and adjacent deserts, spokesman Ryan Scudder said. About 100 agents from other parts of the country also were temporarily assigned to the area from Arivaca west to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The agency is planning to announce further steps to prevent deaths later this week.

A similar detail of outside agents is in place in Sasabe, Sonora. Grupo Beta, Mexico's migrant-protection force, has brought a dozen agents in from other parts of the country to prepare migrants for their desert crossings into Arizona.

Until early May, about 1,000 migrants per day were traveling from Altar, Sonora, to the border near Sasabe. From there, they take paths across some of the most dangerous terrain in Southern Arizona, including a route along the west side of the Baboquivari Mountains where 13 people died last year.

The traffic along the dirt toll road to Sasabe has slowed this month, but at least 500 migrants per day are still arriving, said Timoteo de Jesus Salas, the Grupo Beta coordinator in Sasabe. Within a 20-minute span at noontime Thursday, six vans stopped at the Grupo Beta checkpoint south of Sasabe, each carrying about 20 people.

The Grupo Beta agents, who stopped carrying firearms last year in order to focus on their social-service function, asked each group to leave the van and form a circle on the dusty roadside. Then agents gave them a five-minute talk.

The main points: Bring lots of water, but drink it slowly. Don't let your guide walk faster than the slowest group member. If you run out of water, give up and seek the Border Patrol. And if the Border Patrol finds you, show your hands and don't resist.

Each group was silent as members listened to the talk and appeared to grasp the risk of the journey they were about to undertake. Many thanked the agents as they jammed themselves back into the ramshackle vans with "Altar-Sasabe" scrawled on the side.

And they gratefully accepted the agents' usual parting words, "Good luck."

* Contact Tim Steller at 434-4086 or steller@azstarnet.com.

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