Border Has Record Illegal Immigrant Deaths

[Texsox]

Border Has Record Illegal Immigrant Deaths

Sep 03 9:57 AM US/Eastern

 

 

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN

Associated Press Writer

 

TUCSON, Ariz.

 

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 immigrants 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.

 

How many of those born in America would risk their life for the American dream?

 

Friends of mine in the Border Patrol have all mentioned the dread of seeing vultures circling and knowing what they may find. The drought down here has made it much more difficult for anyone risking the long walk.

[kapkomet]

How many Americans would give up their life for a lot of things, such as freedom (TRUE freedom) of religion? Or some other things, that I'm too tired right now to contemplate? We are so damn spoiled.

[rangercal]

How many Americans would give up their life for a lot of things, such as freedom (TRUE freedom) of religion?  Or some other things, that I'm too tired right now to contemplate?  We are so damn spoiled.

^^^^^ Indeed

[the southside tiger]

Id rather be alive and s***ty than dead and good. Besides, I dont understand, other than trigger happy ranchers, whats down there thats so incredibly dangerous? The Rio Grande?

[Texsox]

Id rather be alive and s***ty than dead and good. Besides, I dont understand, other than trigger happy ranchers, whats down there thats so incredibly dangerous? The Rio Grande?

 

100 miles of desert. Rattlesnakes, dehydration, criminals, 100+ temperatures. Mostly they die of exposure and dehydration. There are Border Patrol agents to avoid, interior checkpoints to avoid. They will try and travel at night, but any water sources have been drying up.

 

Which is why I laugh when someone thinks a major terrorist attack will come from someone walking across the border. Carrying a suitcase bomb through the desert is a silly thought. If you have the means to carry out a major attack, you can buy someone a plane ticket and a student or tourist visa.

[the southside tiger]

100 miles of desert. Rattlesnakes, dehydration, criminals, 100+ temperatures. Mostly they die of exposure and dehydration. There are Border Patrol agents to avoid, interior checkpoints to avoid. They will try and travel at night, but any water sources have been drying up.

 

Which is why I laugh when someone thinks a major terrorist attack will come from someone walking across the border. Carrying a suitcase bomb through the desert is a silly thought. If you have the means to carry out a major attack, you can buy someone a plane ticket and a student or tourist visa.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ive been a northerner all my life, so Im not too familiar with that geography. But what about near major cities? El Paso and San Diego, in particular. At night couldnt they sneak across the border a few miles up from town and walk there by the next morning?

[Middle Buffalo]

How many of those born in America would risk their life for the American dream?

...being separated from friends and family, language barriers, and having to look over your shoulder 24/7 for the rest of your life. Not to mention, the work illegals do in this country is not exactly the most desirable work to have. It's a tough life.

[Texsox]

Ive been a northerner all my life, so Im not too familiar with that geography. But what about near major cities? El Paso and San Diego, in particular. At night couldnt they sneak across the border a few miles up from town and walk there by the next morning?

 

The border cities round them up quickly and send them back across the river. The toughest areas to get across are 30-40 miles around any city. Most are looking for jobs up north in the fields or food processing plants. The unemployment rates on the river are usually double digits, so it will not do them any good to hang out here.

 

There are interior checkpoints about 40-50 miles into the US along every road. 100% of northbound vehicles must stop, and many are inspected. You may be asked to provide documentation as to your right to be in the US. All of the roads are regularly patrolled. This forces the illegals onto private land, into the brush. There they must be able to carry a lot of water, in summer about 1 gallon per person, per day.

 

Once they are past the checkpoints, some will rendezvous with friends, relatives, or "coyotes", smugglers of humans. They sometimes can relax a bit at this point. Usually they are on their own to survive for a week to 10 days.

 

To reach a major city, here in Texas, they would need rendezvous 600 miles to Houston, 150 or so to San Antonio. It depends on where they cross. The current efforts have caused many illegals to try riskier and riskier routes that are longer, over worse terrain, and drier.

 

All this to pick your lettuce, mow your lawn, or scrape the food off your restaurant plates.

[the southside tiger]

Hmm, not as easy or desirable as I thought. Thanks for the info.

[Texsox]

HOUSTON - Two of the more than 70 illegal immigrants who were trapped in a sweltering, nearly airless tractor-trailer testified against the driver Thursday, with one describing the thud of falling bodies as people died around him in the darkness.

 

Asked how long he believed he was in the trailer, one witness, Jose Juan Roldan Castro, replied, ``For me, it was centuries.''

 

The immigrants testified Thursday on the third day of the trial of Tyrone Williams, who drove and abandoned the big rig and could face the death penalty if convicted for his role in the deaths of 19 of the immigrants in May 2003.

 

Roldan, who was smuggled from Mexico, said he listened as others began dying and their bodies fell.

 

``At that point, I was in bad shape. My head was bursting. I could no longer breathe,'' said Roldan, 38, who spoke in Spanish through an interpreter.

 

Roldan said as the heat became unbearable, he and the other immigrants took off their sweat-drenched clothes and crowded around holes they punched out of the truck so they could breathe.

 

When prosecutors asked if he wanted to get out of the vehicle, Roldan responded: ``Who would want to be inside that truck, inside that hell?''

 

Prosecutors say Williams ignored immigrants' screams for help during the four-hour journey, abandoning the airtight trailer with its doors shut at a truck stop in Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston. Seventeen people died inside the trailer and two others died later.

 

Lone Initial Survivor of Fire in Texas Cane Field Dies

Associated Press Newswires, Dateline Raymondville, Texas, April 17, 2003

    The Willacy County Sheriff's Office released the names of six illegal immigrants who died as a result of being trapped in a burning 40-acre sugar cane field on March 24.

    Sheriff Larry Spence is reported as saying the illegal immigrants, who were hiding in the field, may have either been too frightened or slept through a warning broadcast. The broadcasts are delivered in English and Spanish over a loudspeaker system growers use before setting fires to clear their fields for harvest.

    Egar Isidro Rosas Lemus, ran out of the field screaming from his burns and saying others were in the field. Three men died in the field. Lemus and another man and woman later died from their burns at area hospitals.

[LosMediasBlancas]

It makes you realize just how poor the conditions must be that they leave behind in their countries.

Some Americans make it sound like these people could live good lives in their own countries and that they instead maliciously choose to come to the US. Ask yourself this, if your family was slowly starving to death in Illinois and someone told you that if you crossed over into Indiana you could survive, would there really be a decision to be made?