Deaths at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Another important aspect of the debate surrounding immigration concerns the human rights violations of U.S. immigration policy. Some research has focused on how Operation Gatekeeper and similar policies that have closed off large urban sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border have led to the rise in deaths of undocumented immigrants that have attempted to cross through the dangerous terrain of the Southwestern desert. Researchers at the University of Houston have found that after the implementation of Operation Gatekeeper at the San Diego-Tijuana crossing, Operation Blockade (later renamed Hold-the-Line) at the El Paso-Juarez crossing, and later expansions, deaths of foreign migrants increased, peaking at 370 deaths for the year 2000. Among the various causes of death, the sharpest increase has been due to exposure to environmental heat, cold, and dehydration from the period of 1994-2002. These researchers estimate that approximately 100 deaths per year can be attributed to policies that have directed migrants to areas of the Southwestern desert. Though recent policies such as Operation Gatekeeper and Operation Blockade/Hold-the-Line have resulted in a substantial increase in environmental exposure-related deaths, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border was treacherous before these policies were implemented; undocumented immigrants perished while trying to cross the Rio Grande river and other rivers/canals, through auto-pedestrian accidents while running across major interstate freeways, and other causes.

For more information, see the link below to the "Death at the Border" Project, Center for Immigration Research, University of Houston.

http://www.uh.edu/cir/death.htm

Also see this link to an article by Wayne A. Cornelius, "Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of U.S. Immigration Control Policy" [published in Population and Development Review 27(4): 661-685 (December 2001)]. In this article, Professor Cornelius provides a discussion of the series of border enforcement operations implemented from 1994 until 1999. He also illustrates the geographical distribution of migrant deaths, confirming that Operation Gatekeeper and other border enforcement policies have resulted in the increase of migrant deaths in the desert and mountainous regions of California and Arizona. Drowning in major canals and rivers in the border region also sharply increased during this period. One survey cited in the article found that nearly 70 percent of undocumented immigrants apprehended in the period felt that they had been exposed to some sort of physical risk while attempting to enter the U.S. Such policies of increased border enforcement have not deterred the entry of undocumented immigrants. In fact, sectors of the labor market that have relied most on the labor of undocumented immigrants experienced an increase in Mexican-national laborers during the same period.

http://www.ccis-ucsd.org/PUBLICATIONS/wrkg27new.pdf

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