Border Has Record Illegal Immigrant Deaths

A record 415 people have died trying to cross the border illegally from Mexico in the past 11 months, surpassing the previous high of 383 recorded in fiscal year 2000, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington said Friday.Record numbers of deaths are being recorded in both Border Patrol sectors that cover Arizona and in south Texas, spokesman Mario Villarreal said. Some of the increase reflects a change in the way Tucson Border Patrol officials are counting the dead. In late June, they began including some remains found by other law enforcement agencies but not previously counted. Even accounting for the change, Arizona's 228 recorded deaths so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, were more than in all of fiscal said Border Patrol spokesman Luis Garza. He attributed the increase to unprecedented heat and an eastward shift by smugglers to a more mountainous and treacherous stretch of desert east of the Baboquivari Mountains and the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation.Villarreal noted that many Illegal Immigrant probably are physically stressed even before they cross into the United States. "The smugglers are moving the groups laterally in Mexico and then crossing them in very desolate, remote places along the Southwest border," he said. He said smugglers frequently abandon those who become ill, injured or tired in harsh conditions. In the El Paso sector, which covers the border area in New Mexico and two western Texas counties, there were 25 deaths by mid-August, up from 18 last year.