Lauren C. Moye, FISM News
Migrant deaths have increased by over 50% since 2021, and 223% since 2020, highlighting the brutality of illegal human trafficking operations under the Biden administration’s disastrous border policies.
On July 25, the Washington Examiner reported that they had obtained exclusive Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) data showing 609 migrant bodies have been found on the U.S. side of the southern border so far during the current fiscal year, which began in October.
In the previous FY2021, CBP recorded a new record of 566 migrant deaths, a number which FY2022 has already blazed past during the first nine months. In fact, the migrant deaths for this year have already more than doubled the government data for FY2020 of 247 deaths.
To put it in perspective, there will be around 800 deaths for the current fiscal year if the current rate holds for the remaining three months. That makes for at least a 41% increase from last year’s record high and a 223% surge from FY2020.
“Any needless death at the U.S.-Mexico border is tragic. It is time we fix our broken immigration system — but any reform efforts MUST begin with securing our borders,” Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) said recently.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration has gone as far as to label the U.S.-Mexico border “the deadliest land crossing in the world” and a “grave human rights crisis.”
But the death rate is only one of the data points that show how an unsecured border, combined with weak illegal immigration enforcement, presents a danger to these immigrants.
The CBP also reports there has been a surge in border patrol rescues of non-citizens under the Biden administration. In FY2022 alone there have already been 16,897 of these rescues, already dwarfing the amount of times rescues were needed in previous years. In FY2021, there were 12,833 rescues, and FY2020 only had 5,071. This means there has been a 31% increase from 2021 numbers and a 233% surge from 2020.
The details of these stories highlight the extreme brutality of human traffickers.
“Yesterday, smugglers left two young children — an infant and a toddler — in the Sonoran Desert to die,” Tucson Sector Border Patrol Chief John Modlin said in a statement. “This is not just another example of smugglers exploiting migrants for money. This is cruelty.”
Border patrol rescued the 18-month-old and unresponsive 4-month-old from where smugglers left them near Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument after receiving a tip from an apprehended immigrant.
Last September, CBP reported the rescue of an abandoned 2-year-old girl and her 4-month brother in the Eagle Pass sector.
It’s not just children that get left behind by traffickers, either. Air support was used last week to locate and rescue two adults in separate incidents. For the woman lost in the mountains, an additional agent team had to hike into her location to provide aid until an air rescue could be completed.
Immigrants also risk death by crossing the Rio Grande River. The Eagle Pass Fire Department in Texas is responsible for pulling the bodies of those who don’t make it across from the river.
“Two years ago, we would probably make in a year’s time about 20 to 25 drownings,” Fire Department Chief Manuel Mello II told the Washington Examiner just a few days ago. “Right now, you’re looking at maybe 30 body recoveries in a month.”
Some of those bodies are children. Mello told the Washington Examiner about a 3-year-old recovered from the river last week as well as a family who lost all of their children to the current.
Just the News recounted how a 5-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy, both migrant children, drowned last week. An infant was also in grave condition.
Meanwhile, CBP agents rescued an entire family from drowning in the Del Rio border sector last year.
There were 199,976 immigrant encounters at the border in June, CBP data shows. It’s estimated that nearly 5 million people have illegally crossed into the U.S. so far during Biden’s presidency.