Harsh anti-immigration policies do not dissuade migrants from repeatedly attempting to enter the U.S., according to an online panel of migration experts convened by the Center for Migration Studies.
So-called “prevention through deterrence” tactics, like building border walls, restricting asylum access and the Trump-era practice of separating migrant families at the border, have turned out to be as deadly as they are ineffective, said Donald Kerwin, editor of the Journal on Migration and Human Security and moderator of the CMS webinar on migrant border deaths.
Don Kerwin
Brutal methods don’t work because most migrants already face persecution and death in their home countries, Kerwin explained. “Desperate persons aren’t deterred. They keep coming, particularly those who understand the risks. The threat of violence and food insecurity drives them despite the extraordinary levels of enforcement spending.”
The October webinar featured researchers Courtney Beth Siegert, Daniel Martinez and Heather Edgar explaining how the U.S.’s increasingly restrictive immigration policies have changed migration patterns and contributed to a surge in deaths in desert regions in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Deaths in remote regions along the border evoke memories of migrants from Africa and the Middle East drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, CMS Executive Director Russell Mario noted. “Certainly the space at the border, whether it is the desert or elsewhere, has become a place of the unfolding of tragedy with great human consequence and cost.”
An October report co-authored by Kerwin reported that by August 2024 “a minimum of 5,405 persons had died or gone missing along this border since 2014, with record high numbers since 2021.”
The number of known deaths reached the point that the International Organization for Migration named the U.S.-Mexico border as the “world’s deadliest migration land route in 2023, Kerwin added.
Prevention through deterrence strategies account for many of the fatalities, including deliberately inadequate legal immigration and asylum programs, he said. “And well-known Border Patrol tactics contribute to deaths, like buzzing and scattering migrants with helicopters and pursuing them to exhaustion and dangerous chases.”
Courtney Siegert
Immigration restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 outbreak, and expanded by President Joe Biden, also contributed to increasingly deadly migration patterns, said Courtney Siegert, a postdoctoral scholar in anthropology at Texas State University.
Among them was Title 42, she said. Implemented by Trump in 2020, the program enabled authorities to quickly expel asylum seekers and other migrants to Mexico or their home countries without the due process required by U.S. and international law.
After Title 42 expired, the Biden administration severely limited asylum access, including by requiring seekers to remain in Mexico for appointments made with a glitchy phone app and by applying more stringent requirements for those seeking refuge.
“Migration, as it relates to migrant deaths, has really changed in this post-pandemic world,” Siegert said. “We have increasingly limited access to refugee and asylum pathways, and part of that has contributed to increased irregular migration in Texas. Border enforcement at the state level and national level in Texas has then contributed to an increase in migrant deaths in this era of prevention through deterrence.”
New Mexico experienced a major increase in migrant deaths during this period, said Edgar, a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico and a forensic anthropologist with the state’s Office of Medical Investigator.
Heather Edgar
“It was not a destination for migrants in the past, so our rates of migrant deaths over the decades were extremely low and could be dealt with in our standing medical-legal system. It’s only been since 2021 that we have seen some changes.”
Edgar showed a slide tracking migrant deaths as low as two in 2015 before rising to nine in 2020. But in 2021 the figure jumped to 35, followed by 58 in 2022, 117 in 2023 and 120 so far this year.
Daniel Martinez
“Since 2019, on average, it’s a 20-fold increase in deaths,” he explained. “And this is just through August. We did have additional deaths in September and October, so I think we’re at 130 or 135 now. And just for comparison, these are similar numbers to what is seen in Arizona, which has traditionally been a high area for migrant deaths.”
Just as important as tracking the numbers of migrants who perished is trying to think of them as individuals, said Martinez, associate professor in the School of Sociology and a co-director of the Binational Migration Institute at the University of Arizona.
“That means each one of these individuals is somebody’s mother, somebody’s father, somebody’s sister, brother, niece. These are people. These are people who are connected to communities back home, connected to communities here in the United States. And we have to think about the effects a lot of these individuals, the family members of these individuals, have endured.”
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