The US town of Lukeville, Arizona, has become the illegal entry point for 193 Cubans in the last four days. This Wednesday, the arrest of a group made up of 51 migrants from the island, four Colombians and one Dominican was reported. “Ten were children, among them there was a minor who was only 11 months old,” detailed in their social networks Tucson Sector Border Patrol Chief John Modlin.
Over the weekend, Ajo Station agents found two large groups near Lukeville. Modlin specified that among the 174 detainees were 142 Cubans, 29 Brazilians and three Dominicans.
The Border Patrol has warned about networks of coyotes that cross migrants through the desert on motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles, but this transit continues to be dangerous for most of the groups that make the crossing through desert areas, putting their lives at risk.
“Transnational criminal organizations take advantage of the vulnerability of foreigners with false promises of legal status and risk lives by encouraging dangerous border crossings,” the Border Patrol warned.
Hundreds of migrants are entering the border between the Mexican state of Sonora and Arizona. Fox News reporter Bill Melugin shared a video of people dressed in camouflage using a rope to scale the border wall and cross into the US “In just 45 minutes, in Naco, our team saw more of a dozen immigrants to scale the border wall and then run into Arizona,” he said, adding that there have been more than 500,000 such departures so far this year.
EXCLUSIVE: In just a 45 minute span in Naco, AZ, our team saw over a dozen illegal immigrants dressed in camouflage use a rope to scale the border wall, then run into AZ. None were caught, making them “gotaways”. There have been over 500,000 drops so far this year. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/kV29qahnEY
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 13, 2022
In this context, the morgues in the US southern border states such as Arizona and Texas are saturated and cannot cope with registering and storing the bodies of undocumented immigrants who have died in their desire to achieve American dream.
Almost every day a drowned person is reported in the Rio Grande or ranchers discover a dead person inside their properties, Tom Schmerber, sheriff of Maverick County (Texas), told Efe.
On the morning of September 1, nine immigrants died trying to cross the river in the Eagle Pass sector, which belongs to Maverick County, and 37 people were rescued in that incident.
Peruvian migrant Alan Vladimir Paredes Salazar, 38, was one of the deceased. His body was transferred to the Webb County Medical Examiner’s Office, according to Efe’s family, who hopes that the body will be repatriated as soon as possible. But the process could take time. The Webb County morgue is overwhelmed by processing the bodies of migrants constantly arriving from its border and neighboring counties.
Since last January and until the end of August, the deaths of 218 migrants have been registered in that county, exceeding the 196 deaths in 2021. Due to the increase in deaths last year, the county morgue bought five portable refrigerators, which are already almost to its capacity limit.
The situation for morgues in the border counties of Arizona is no different. According to figures from the Compassionate Borders group, from last January to the end of August a total of 126 undocumented migrants have died on the border of that state. A large part of the deceased arrives at the Pima County morgue, where Efe made a tour.
The cold of the freezers and the smell of death greet those who cross the gigantic metal door of the chamber where only some of the bodies that have been found on the border in recent months are kept. “We additionally have four containers that are outside. Each one has a capacity for 80 bodies. Right now, one of them is already at its maximum capacity,” said Gene Hernandez, coroner’s investigator for the County Medical Examiner’s Office. Pima.
The dimension of the tragedy is reflected in the dozens of white bags, all arranged inside the refrigerators, identified only with an orange card. Each card shows several numbers that indicate the date the body was found, the coordinates of the place and whether it corresponds to a man or a woman. The vast majority have only one word in common: “Unknown”.
“Identifying the body is one of the slowest and most difficult processes,” Hernández said. One of the main obstacles is the advanced state of decomposition in which the remains arrive. The Arizona desert is simply “unforgiving” and in a matter of days the body decomposes to a point of virtual “mummification” due to the high temperatures, or is eaten by animals.
One of the bodies inside the bags was just a dark brown skeleton. The skull no longer had teeth and in the part of the spine you could still see remnants of meat, bone and desert soil combined into a single mass. “Sometimes we find birth certificates, identifications on the migrants’ clothes, but we cannot assume that it is really them,” said the researcher.
Due to the lack of space and the continuous arrival of migrant bodies, the remains can only be kept in the freezers for four months. If they are not identified within this period they are cremated and only a piece of bone is preserved for possible future identification using DNA analysis.
“The problem is that genetic tests are very expensive, and in order to make a positive identification, the family must also provide a sample,” Hernández explained.
According to the most recent figures from the Department of Homeland Security, during the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30, there have been nearly 750 deaths of undocumented migrants on the border with Mexico. It is a new record that exceeds the 557 migrant deaths reported during fiscal year 2021 by that federal agency.
By sea the entry of Cubans continues, this Wednesday the Border Patrol took 14 rafters into custody after making landfall in Islamorada. Since October 2021, when the current fiscal year began, more than 177,000 Cubans have arrived by land in the United States and more than 5,000 by sea, a migration crisis that exceeds those of 1980 and 1994.
#HappeningNow: US Border Patrol agents & @mcsonews responded to a migrant landing near Islamorada, FL. 14 Cuban migrants were taken into custody after making landfall on a rustic vessel. There are 12 adult males & 2 adult females in the group. #borderpatrol #Florida #Cuba pic.twitter.com/mBBO5hdSAB
— Chief Patrol Agent Walter N. Slosar (@USBPChiefMIP) September 14, 2022
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