Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just released the latest data on migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the results are shocking. At least 895 people died at the border in fiscal year 2022, a 57% increase from the previous fiscal year. The grim statistic makes 2022 the deadliest year on record for immigrants trying to come to the United States, and the number is likely an underestimate.
For years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection blamed the rising death toll on three factors: summer heat, rugged desert terrain and the cruelty of smugglers who leave migrants there to die.
Climate change is indeed making summers hotter and drier, meaning migrants who spend days or weeks crossing remote deserts are more likely to become dehydrated and die from exposure if left in the sun long enough. But rising temperatures don’t explain why migrants have to cross such dangerous terrain along the border in the first place, often dying in the process. The real culprit is a vast surveillance apparatus that directs migrants — including those seeking asylum — into what CBP itself calls “hostile territory.”
In November 2021, a month into fiscal year 2022, CBP took me on a tour of the surveillance infrastructure in the Tucson Border Patrol Sector, which covers more than 90,000 square miles and over the next 11 months at least 142 immigrants would lose their lives there. I watched CBP use Predator drones to track a group of 11 migrants and reviewed feeds from remote cameras that allow agents to monitor human activity in the desert from air-conditioned office buildings. Later, while I was walking around Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument with a local environmental activist, a Border Patrol agent drove up to us and said he saw us on one of the cameras.
CBP’s network of surveillance towers, hidden cameras, drones, and high-altitude sensors is the result of a “prevention through deterrence” law enforcement strategy.
The policy was implemented in the mid-1990s and was initially intended to increase manpower in high-traffic areas along the border. At the time, most immigrants entered the United States through cities—for example, they would climb the fence that separated Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. In response, the Border Patrol has flooded cities along the border with agents to prevent migrants from crossing. The Border Patrol’s 1994 strategic plan wrote that those trying to cross would be pushed into “more adverse terrain, less suitable for crossing and more suitable for law enforcement.”
“There is a significant correlation between the location of border surveillance technology, the routes taken by migrants, and the location of human remains found in the deserts of southern Arizona”
Thirty years later, the plan was confirmed, even though it did not actually reduce immigration. Instead, it simply changed the location of the crossing, as the 1994 plan predicted. Surveillance tools allow the Border Patrol to track migrants across large swaths of the border without actually getting there — and the agency considers them a “force multiplier.” But the expansion of U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance equipment has come at a huge human cost. A 2019 study by University of Arizona researchers found “significant correlations between the location of border surveillance technology, the routes taken by migrants, and the location of human remains found in the deserts of southern Arizona.”
Migrants don’t always know about CBP’s tools to track them in the desert, but smugglers certainly do – so they encourage migrants to enter the U.S. via remote, dangerous routes where they are less likely to be intercepted by Border Patrol agents but risk death. Sex is much bigger.
Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allows CBP to deport migrants back to Mexico without a hearing, may also have had a compounding effect, exacerbating The death toll in 2022 is huge.The policy is ostensibly meant to limit the spread of covid-19, but is actually anti-immigration for the Trump and Biden administrations Deterrence strategy.
Due to Article 42 Some asylum seekers who would have turned themselves in to Border Patrol at the first opportunity instead try to evade detection — sometimes because they have been deported to Mexico, where they face significant dangers. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Fiscal Year 2021 Southwest Border Enforcement Report noted that the high number of encounters that year was “due in part to higher recidivism rates for individuals processed under Title 42 public health authorities.” In other words, some migrants expelled under Article 42 tried to cross the border again and again until they succeeded, or until the harsh desert terrain forced them to give up. In 2022, the Border Patrol expelled more than 938,000 single adult immigrants and 116,000 family group immigrants, according to the agency.
Of the 895 deaths listed in 2022, 131 were listed as having partial “skeletal remains,” meaning death could have occurred at any time. If we exclude these from the 2022 statistics, there were still 764 confirmed deaths in 12 months, the majority of which were due to exposure or drowning.
Title 42, record heat, and the steady expansion of CBP’s surveillance capabilities create a perfect storm for migrant deaths in 2022. Section 42 was repealed last year, but the bipartisan border bill that Congress spent months debating contains a provision that would effectively close the border like Section 42 whenever an encounter with a number of people exceeds a certain threshold. Meanwhile, border surveillance isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s next goal is to adopt a “unified vision” for unauthorized movement across the U.S.-Mexico border.
If recent history is any guide, more surveillance will not reduce immigration. However, its death toll will continue to rise.