Report: Even as fewer illegally cross southwest border, more are dying

In early December, a winter storm system brought a rare dusting of snow to South Texas. In the following weeks, daytime temperatures often dipped into the 30s and 40s.

The cold snap likely caused the deaths of five migrants, whose bodies were found in mid-January at a ranch near Falfurrias, according to Eddie Canales, director of the South Texas Human Rights Center, a non-profit tasked with recovering and identifying the bodies of migrants in South Texas.

"I think those guys froze to death," Canales said. "We've had a couple of periods here, cold, cold periods here, where we've had a high number of migrant deaths, die of hypothermia."

Despite a dramatic drop in the number of migrants apprehended by authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017, many continue to risk reaching the United States despite the dangers.

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The number of migrants found dead along the border rose in 2017, according to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration. Texas saw the biggest increase in deaths.

"When migrants seek out remote routes in order to avoid apprehension they often travel through harsh terrain, which poses a greater threat to their lives," said Julia Black of IOM's Missing Migrants project, which helped collect the migrant death data.

An exact number of migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border is almost impossible to determine, a USA Today Network report concluded last year. IOM's count of migrant deaths is considered among the most reliable because it works directly with coroners, medical examiners, law enforcement and non-profit groups such as the South Texas Human Rights Center.

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Death estimate just a minimum

Since President Donald Trump's inauguration, border apprehensions — the best-available measures of migration patterns — have decreased 44 percent, compared to the year before. (They reached their lowest point in April, but have been rising since then.)

However, the number of migrant deaths rose slightly during the same time period, to 412.

Black said that figure is the minimum estimate of the true number of deaths. And since more of them are happening in remote areas, that makes it harder to recover and identify their remains.

Most of the deaths were caused by exposure to the elements or natural barriers, she added.

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Canales said many of the factors driving people from their home countries remain, whether its gang violence in Central America or poverty in Mexico.

"People are still scrambling to make a living and survive. They're forced out," he said. "A lot of them, it's forced migration, and some of it also regular migration, people traveling to work."

According to the IOM, among U.S. border states, Texas accounted for almost half of the recovered remains along the entire border, a 26 percent increase from 2016.

Statistics show that Texas' migrant death tally in 2017 surpassed Arizona, which for many years was the busiest human smuggling corridor. The Sonoran desert still remains one of the deadliest routes for migrants. The number of migrant deaths recorded here decreased only slightly, from 163 in 2016 to 160 last year.

"This is surprising if you account for the fact that (Border Patrol) figures indicate that fewer crossings occurred last year," Black said. "Many bodies recovered in Arizona have been in the desert for some time, meaning that they are often heavily decomposed or skeletal, so it is hard to draw any hard conclusions from the data."

Competing numbers over deaths

After nine months trying to count every migrant death in southwestern border states, the USA Today Network found no reliable, comprehensive record of such deaths. That's because reporting is so fragmented, varying from state to state and even from county to county.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's statistics are incomplete. The agency that tracks those numbers, Border Patrol, is the same agency responsible for arresting migrants, and they only count deaths agents have encountered in the field.

For example, in fiscal year 2017 — October 2016 to September 2017 — Border Patrol listed 72 migrant deaths in the Tucson sector. This area covers most of the Arizona border, including the deadly deserts west of Nogales.

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However, the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, which houses the remains of migrants found along the Tucson sector, recorded 147 migrant deaths during that same period.

Pima County's chief medical examiner Gregory Hess said Border Patrol accounts for only about half of the human remains found along the Arizona desert.

"The other half are found by whoever: hunters, hikers, humanitarian groups," he said. "That's why their numbers are lower."

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