Children Dead in the Desert
Jun 27th, 2006 | By Michel Marizco | Category: General News, Immigration, Politics
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THE BORDER REPORT
I don't know why this hasn't been reported in the U.S. media, but both Nogales, Sonora, newspaper are reporting that three migrants, including a child, were found dead in the desert yesterday.
U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered the body of the migrant child after an apprehended border crosser told them where to look.
The boy, 15 years old, had apparently died of exposure, same as most of the 100 others who've been found dead this year.
Then, an 18-year-old young man was found dead after he tried calling 9-1-1 on his cellphone for help.
The same day, a Black Hawk helicopter patrol found the third dead migrant, a skeleton in the desert.
There's nothing new here, it's simply pitiful.
But I've never heard of so many children found dead during an illegal crossing.
I've seen mothers who've died, men who collapsed, old people, middle-aged, the weak and the infirm die in the desert, but this is the first year when children were found.
A three-year-old was found dead in May after the child's mother told Border Patrol agents she'd left him behind.
That case proved to be somewhat mysterious. Apparently, and this is what I was told by a federal agent speaking on condition of anonymity, the boy was very nearly never discovered:
The child had been dead for several hours by the time his mother reported it to the agents who captured her.
However, the arresting agent did not speak Spanish well enough to understand her.
It wasn't until the mother was taken through the voluntary repatriation process that a Spanish-speaking agent finally asked the panicked mother what had happened.
That's when her footprints were recorded and faxed over to the search and rescue team, BORSTAR, and the child was finally found.
The boy's arms were folded across his chest when the agents found him.
I wouldn't count an 18-year-old boy in the same category as these kids; after all, if he committed a crime in this country, we wouldn't be calling him a boy, he'd be a man.
But it is definitely a new phenomenon along this stretch of the border that three young people have died trying to cross.
I don't yet know what this speaks to. The elementary answer is that more children than ever are attempting to cross the border and the law of averages is beginning to take its toll on kids.
