Ryan Van Velzer

The Republic | azcentral.com

The bodies of undocumented immigrants are strewn across the Arizona desert.

They're scattered beneath trees and wedged into the crevices of arroyos, mummified, or left exposed until their bones bake in the sun or lost underneath layers of mud and dust from flash floods and monsoon rains.

Among the Wild West of Arizona's Sonoran Desert, U.S. Border Patrol agents have recorded more undocumented-immigrant deaths than any other stretch of border in the country, every year, since the Border Patrol started keeping statistics in 1998, according to Andy Adame, Arizona's U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.

From fiscal 1998 to 2013, the Border Patrol has recorded more than 2,701 bodies found in the Arizona desert.

"It's the harshest climate along the U.S.-Mexico border," Adame said. "When you've got over 30 days of 100-degree weather, that makes it deadly for anybody crossing out there."

And a person dying of dehydration looks for any amount of shade, he said.

But the sun isn't the only threat. Arizona's monsoon brings flash floods and lightning strikes; lightning recently claimed a 19-year old immigrant who was illegally crossing the border, Adame said.

Then there are the coyotes.

Before 2004, human smuggling was largely left up to large families living near such border communities as Nogales, but over the past 10 years drug cartels have taken over, Adame said.

"It's to the extent where life is a commodity. It's traded and lost like a television set falling off the back of a truck on a freeway," he said. "If one falls off along the way, you don't stop to pick it up, because it's no good."

And so it is, with those unable to make the five- to seven-day trek through the desert. The dehydrated, the weak and the incapacitated get left behind.

Oftentimes, the people crossing the border have no idea they are walking into a death trap. Smugglers lie and tell people the journey will take only a day, because once they start travelling there is no turning back, he said.

BODIES BY THE HUNDREDS

Arizona's undocumented border deaths peaked in 2005, when Border Patrol agents recorded more than 271 bodies found in the Sonoran Desert.

Since then, the Border Patrol has recorded an average of 207 undocumented border deaths every year.

So far in fiscal 2014, agents have recorded 97 deaths.

IDENTIFYING THE REMAINS

For Gregory Hess, Pima County medical examiner, the challenge is trying to put names with the faces of those deceased.

Hess examines the vast majority of undocumented-immigrant deaths in the state, including those found in Cochise, Pima and Santa Cruz counties. The problem is most immigrants travel with either no identification or false identification, he said.

"We get a lot of skeletal remains, mummified, fully fleshed, it sort of runs the whole gamut," Hess said.

Arizona's conditions can dry out the skin of these bodies, which leads to mummification, he said, adding, "You can't take fingerprints off mummified hands." Other bodies have been exposed so long, nothing is left except bones.

Hess said he uses a "hodgepodge" of techniques to identify the bodies brought to his office. Some are identified with distinctive articles of clothing, others with dental records, DNA, tattoos or fingerprints when applicable, he said.

If they're identified, the death certificates of those found are recertified with their names. Afterward, the Medical Examiner's Office contacts the consulate of the person's home country and the family to have the remains returned, Hess said.

DECREASES IN BORDER CROSSINGS

Part of the decrease in undocumented border deaths may be attributed to a decrease in people crossing the border, Adame said.

So far this year, the Border Patrol has apprehended more than 77,000 people attempting to cross Arizona's border with Mexico, a 25 percent decrease in volume since last year, he said.

"When you have less people out in the desert, you're going to have less deaths and less rescues," Adame said.

As Arizona border apprehensions fall, they are on the rise in Texas, where border agents have apprehended approximately 228,000 undocumented immigrants in the Rio Grande Valley so far in fiscal 2014, according to Peter Bidegain III, a Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande Valley. The increase is primarily due to the influx of immigrants traveling from Central American countries, especially El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, for whom the shortest route to the U.S. leads them to Texas, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures.

Adame said, "All I can say (is), the volume of traffic is down In Arizona, which is a good thing for us. Now we can concentrate more on the drug cartels and the violence associated with them."