Last year, community activists in Arizona began to independently track migrant deaths, and the numbers that have been reported are very compelling. In 2004, the Border Patrol reported that 172 migrants died in Arizona. This number is significantly lower than the number reported by independent NGO’s, which reported 221 deaths. The NGO data was compiled with reports from medical examiner’s offices in Arizona and the Mexican government. A similar study, carried out by the Arizona Daily Star, reported 218 deaths.

Why then, does the Border Patrol not count nearly 25% of migrant deaths? In recognition of this discrepancy, recent media reports cite Border Patrol officials as pledging to cross-refernce their records with local medical examiner’s offices – an important step forward. However, internal record-keeping discrepancies are at the heart of the problem. To date, Border Patrol statistics only include migrants whose bodies were recovered by their own agents. Bodies recovered by local law enforcement or other agencies are not included in the tally. Furthermore, conversations with the Border Patrol show that many times, a migrant will be removed from the list if the body cannot be positively identified as that of a foreign national. Given the nature of undocumented entry into the US, many migrants do not carry identification. But the telltale signs of heat exhaustion, dehydration, clothes beaten by the desert, and little or no possessions on them identify hundreds of migrants a year, regardless of their official documentation.

As part of the Border Working Group’s summer migrant death project, Border Patrol officials in Washington, DC provide us with official migrant deaths counts every two weeks. The following experience highlights some of the inconsistencies in Border Patrol statistics. From June 1 to June 15, 2005, only 2 deaths were officially reported by Washington for the El Paso Sector (the division which is responsible for all of New Mexico and the El Paso region of Texas). However, when we called the El Paso sector offices in Texas directly to distinguish which, if any, of those deaths occurred in the New Mexico part of the sector, officials there reported 3 drowning deaths in Texas and one death in New Mexico for the same time period. To further confuse the landscape, the El Paso times published 3 different articles reporting 4 drowning victims in Texas for the same time period.

One half of all migrant deaths last year occurred in Arizona. As the above story illustrates, the discrepancy in death reports most likely is not specific to Arizona alone. Without the same scrutiny that Arizona faces in its record-keeping, problems like this often go unreported and unchallenged in other parts of the border. Unfortunately, only in Arizona do we have accurate migrant death statistics kept by independent sources at this time.

On the reverse side of this page, there is the total number of deaths that occur in each two week period. These numbers are based strictly on Border Patrol statistics. Despite our serious concerns about the accuracy of these numbers, they are the only consistent border wide numbers available.