Decades of accumulated data suggest that while border enforcement deterrence strategies do not reduce the number of unauthorized border crossings into the United States, they have proved a major contributing factor to a rising death toll among migrants seeking to reach the United States.
That is the key finding of a border-wide analysis conducted by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. The C.M.S. study, titled “The Weight of Numbers: Counting Border Crossing Deaths and Policy Intent,” includes contributions from experts in every state along the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to the study, enforcement tactics do not in the end deter asylum seekers, who are typically fleeing life-threatening circumstances or are seeking to be reunited with loved ones in the United States. Those migrating people are willing to take great risks to escape their circumstances. But stricter enforcement does push border crossers to more dangerous paths along the border and more perilous forms of migration.
“People are dying [because of] border enforcement tactics,” said Donald Kerwin, the center’s former executive director, pointing to the latest data on migrants who have died or suffered crippling injuries after attempting to overcome fortified and heightened walls at the border in an interview with America. Mr. Kerwin cited one example—the death of Miriam Stephany Girón Luna, a pregnant, 19-year-old woman who died in 2020 after falling from a border wall in El Paso, Tex. Doctors tried in vain to save her baby through an emergency C-section.
It is not yet clear what enforcement changes the incoming Trump administration plan to make at the border, Mr. Kerwin said, but an emphasis on fortifying the border wall would likely make migrant mortality worse. More enforcement will not stem the influx of migrants, he said. It will force migrants into even more dangerous routes to find a crossing.
In 2023, the International Organization for Migration called the U.S.-Mexico border the world’s deadliest land migration route. By August 2024, at least 5,405 individuals had died or gone missing since 2014 in the U.S. southwest. After a few years during the Covid-19 pandemic when migrant deaths declined because fewer people were able to migrate at all, migrant deaths rose sharply in 2023 and are trending higher this year.
Desperation in the nations south of the United States had been building for years while borders have remained largely closed. “The end of the pandemic...had a lot to do with the increased crossings and movement,” Mr. Kerwin said.
And new enforcement strategies instituted during the pandemic contributed to increases in the number of deaths, Mr. Kewin said. Title 42, an emergency component of a 1944 public health law, allowed Border Patrol agents to immediately turn back migrants at ports of entry because of the Covid-19 emergency. Thousands of migrants responded by seeking out more isolated spots along the U.S. southwest desert for clandestine entry into the United States, contributing to the death toll.
‘Prevention by deterrence’
Though migrant deaths because of irregular crossings has been a sporadic problem in the past, a consistent increase in those deaths can be traced back to 1993 with the inauguration of the Border Patrol’s “prevention by deterrence” strategy, according to Daniel E. Martinez, co-director of the Binational Migration Institute at the University of Arizona.
The theory behind the strategy, that a show of force—“namely, increased Border Patrol agents and vehicles and lighting”—would “deter people crossing through downtown El Paso essentially” has never been empirically confirmed, Mr. Martinez told America.
The effort may have led to fewer Border Patrol apprehensions, he said, but that result was likely because border crossers simply began making their way to more remote areas. Nevertheless, the Border Patrol began implementing the strategy across the southwest.
The C.M.S. analysis also found that the Border Patrol has for years undercounted migrant border deaths, according to Mr. Martinez.
“There is no centralized, standardized effort across the border to enumerate and track migrant fatalities,” he said. Investigations of border deaths vary by state.
In Arizona, for example, county medical examiners are empowered to confirm and tally deaths, a process Mr. Martinez described as more accurate The county medical examiner also works to reunite remains with loved ones in countries of origin. In parts of Texas, however, death investigations are carried out by a justice of the peace, who may not always report findings to the Border Patrol, and there is no centralized system to count deaths in the numerous counties on the Texas border with Mexico.
Mr. Martinez estimates that the Border Patrol undercounts migrant deaths by at least 20 percent. “One of the first steps in trying to address the root causes of a social problem is to have valid, reliable data on the extent of the social problem,” Mr. Martinez said. Researchers know, for example, that deaths are directly related to enforcement policy, forced migration and a U.S. visa system that closes the door on new opportunities for legal immigration.
Stephanie Leutert, the director of the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin, focused on the undercounting of migrant deaths in Texas from 2009 to 2017 in her contribution to the C.M.S. report. She said the accuracy of counts varies from one county to the next depending on the relationship the Border Patrol has with local authorities.
Some of the statistical inadequacies derive from the way the Border Patrol defines migrant deaths, Ms. Leutert said. She explained that human remains must be discovered in specific Texas counties in order to be counted as migrant deaths. In 2003, sheriff deputies discovered 70 migrants being smuggled in a trailer in Victoria, Tex. While 19 people died in that tragic incident, Ms. Leutert said they were not counted as migrant deaths by the Border Patrol.
Migrants who drown in the Rio Grande also complicate the count, she said. When they wash up on the U.S. side of the river, they become part of the migrant death toll. But if the bodies of the victims end up on the Mexico side of the river, their deaths may be counted by Mexican authorities, but they will not be included in the migrant death record kept by the United States.
Accurate numbers help leaders better understand the impact of policy, Ms. Leutert said. The Border Patrol, for example, uses the data it tracks to decide the most effective place to build rescue beacons for migrants. Accuracy in death reports also help determine where to commit forensic resources and D.N.A. testing capacity.
Migrants most at risk
Ms. Leutert distinguished between two major categories of border crossers. Those who cross seeking asylum often turn themselves into the Border Patrol and are less likely to die on the journey. But those she described as clandestine migrants take the most risks. These migrants cross in more dangerous areas or are willing to accept more dangerous means of transportation, including hiding in trunks of cars and trailers or hiking around checkpoints.
Minors tend to be seeking asylum, Ms. Leutert said, and are less likely to die in transit. Still, she said, “If you look at drowning deaths, you see a much higher percentage of kids, infants, entire families drowning.”
While the Biden administration ended Title 42 after a court ruling, it has maintained and strengthened other limits on asylum-seeking. On Sept. 30, the administration added new limitations on asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border, a policy shift swiftly condemned by Catholic organizations who advocate for immigrants and refugees.
The order, announced through a proclamation by President Joe Biden, hardens restrictions that took effect in June. According to the previous constraints, new asylum claims would be suspended once border crossings at official points of entry exceed 2,500 per day. When those border crossings dropped to less than 1,500 per day over the course of a week, the ban would be lifted.
But with the stricter measures, the daily number of migrant crossings will need to fall below 1,500 for about a month before the suspension of new asylum claims is lifted. The administration also plans to begin including unaccompanied minors in the daily count.
“Factoring in the arrival of children to deny asylum processing to other vulnerable people is troubling,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute, said in a statement on Oct. 1. “We call on the Biden-Harris administration to urgently reverse course by fully restoring access to asylum at our border and to acknowledge the lives and dreams of those we call neighbors at our U.S.-Mexico border.”
It is unclear why the administration felt compelled to add to asylum restrictions. According to The Associated Press, the restrictions that began in June had yet to be lifted due to the high number of border encounters. The Department of Homeland Security said the seven-day average of encounters has dropped as low as 1,800 a day but has not fallen below the 1,500-a-day threshold that might allow the asylum suspension to be lifted.
New asylum restrictions affect migration routes, and that can make the discovery of migrant remains even more difficult, according to Mr. Martinez. He explained it was more challenging in Texas, where there are more private ranches that are less accessible to Border Patrol, than in Arizona’s expansive federal and tribal lands.
“We know people are dying, and we have the capacity to prevent those deaths,” Mr. Martinez said. “But the political will to do something about it doesn’t seem to be there.” Despite 30 years of analysis and policy recommendations, he said, “migrant deaths continue unabated.”
Mr. Kerwin called identifying remains of deceased migrants a fundamental step. Knowing the causes of death, like dehydration or drowning, is important. But knowing the person’s identity also helps understand what policies may have influenced the person to choose a dangerous entry point.
“They die in our rich country soon after they enter, but we don’t do enough to reunite [the body of the deceased loved one] with their families,” he said. “That’s horrible.”
Mr. Kerwin said knowing the identity of the deceased migrant is also a way of honoring the dead, something that is important for the Catholic faith and other religions. “We’re nickel-and-diming D.N.A. testing [for migrating people] who, as one of the [report’s] writers said, are basically trying to avoid death at home,” he said.
The collaborative report recommends improvements in the tracking of migrant deaths and best practices for coordinating the data among U.S. states. It also urges additional fiscal support to hire more medical examiners and to make D.N.A. testing more widely available. In the end, the report’s collaborators also called bluntly for an end to the “prevention by deterrence” approach.
Other practical steps that would reduce the migrant death toll include improving access to legal immigration and reducing the backlog of asylum claims in U.S. immigration courts. According to the report, Texas authorities should also establish “Regional Migrant Identification Centers” throughout South Texas to improve accounting and increase documentation of migrant fatalities.
In many ways, the recommendations echo sentiments voiced by the bishops of Mexico and the United States for decades. In 2003, the bishops of both countries issued “Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope,” a joint pastoral letter that acknowledged “the right and responsibility of sovereign nations to control their borders and to ensure the security interests of their citizens.” Yet the bishops rejected “some of the policies and tactics that our governments have employed to meet this shared responsibility.”
According to the bishops, a nation’s right to control its borders is not absolute. Nations also have moral and legal obligations to address the humanitarian needs of people who are migrating. The church teaches additionally that people have the right to move to support themselves and their families, that human rights and dignity of migrating people must be respected and that refugees and asylum seekers have special claims on protection from nations that can offer it.
A comprehensive approach to the problem would mean addressing the root causes of migration, Mr. Kerwin said, adding, “To blame the victims is not to address any systemic problems and failures.”
“Pope Francis has talked about this, the right for people to stay put and be where one was born, where one has family, kinship networks and ties and connection to the land,” Mr. Martinez said. “Most people don’t want to leave where they’re from. They don’t want to leave their people and land behind. But they do it because they’re forced to, whether because of climate change or fear of violence or political persecution.”
