Following up on this grim ACLU pie chart on migrant deaths, here's a report from NPR showing a record number of migrant deaths in the past year in Arizona despite the fact that both illegal immigration and the population of illegal immigrants in the U.S. have decreased:
Authorities have discovered 252 bodies in the Arizona desert over the past year. That is a record.
They are the remains of migrants, who died trying to cross into the U.S. illegally. But overall, the number of people crossing illegally is down, according to the Border Patrol.
According to a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center, "An average of 150,000 unauthorized immigrants from Mexico arrived annually during the March 2007 to March 2009 period -- 70% below the annual average of 500,000 that prevailed during the first half of the decade."
The reason deaths are up is because while border security tends to be an ineffective method of dissuading migrants, it does push them into crossing over more dangerous areas. The ACLU of San Diego did a report two years ago on migrant deaths, calling the issue a "humanitarian crisis"; at the time more than 5,600 people were thought to have died trying to illegally cross the border since 1994. NPR says 1900 have died in Arizona alone in the last nine years.
