It’s summer; temperatures are high, and illegal aliens are dying in the hostile terrain that marks much of the porous US southern border. A particularly inhospitable part of New Mexico is the latest death zone in a colossal human tragedy that shows no signs of stopping any time soon.
“US Border Patrol agents found four bodies in the desert surrounding Sunland Park, New Mexico, among about 20 lives lost in the area in just over a month,” El Paso Times reported July 2. All of New Mexico falls under the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, and Sunland Park is only nine miles from the West Texas city. “As day-after-day of 100-degree heat continues to blanket the Borderland, deaths in the desert are being discovered every few days in the border migrant smuggling zone in New Mexico, just west of El Paso,” the paper described.
The deaths are attributable to a deliberate flouting of US immigration law that leads “migrants” to believe if they can just make their way into the interior of the nation, they will be able to stay.
Dying to Cross the Border
Illegal aliens “have been known to perish due to heat stroke after getting disoriented and lost in the desert after crossing the border wall,” The Times notes. The thermometer can reach 110 degrees in the region.
Sunland Park isn’t the only area where illegals are dying. As Liberty Nation News documented in July 2023, Brooks County in South Texas is a notoriously lethal crossing point. The two locales share a similar ugly trait: Smugglers encourage their naïve clientele to push through exceedingly inhospitable conditions with little to no regard for the likelihood that the journey could take the unlawful travelers’ lives.
“The US Border Patrol is again calling on migrants not to trust smugglers who are telling them it’s safe to cross the southern New Mexico desert in triple-digit heat,” News Nation Now reported in 2023. “The plea comes as the number of deceased individuals found by border agents in the El Paso Sector this fiscal year reached 96 [as of July]. Most of the bodies (69) were found in the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station area of responsibility. It stretches from Mount Cristo Rey in Sunland Park to near Columbus, New Mexico. Border agents only found 29 bodies in that area in all of fiscal year 2022.”
Hopping over the border wall also leads to fatalities.
Illegal aliens “die after falling while attempting to scale the wall, or from a combination of injuries and exposure,” High Country News reports on the Sunland Park . “CT scans conducted by OMI reveal fibula and foot fractures in remains recovered from within a mile of the wall.”
Any way you look at it, it’s a recipe for death.
“Maybe the dehydration is survivable. Maybe the lack of food is survivable. Maybe the broken ankle is survivable,” Heather Edgar, a forensic anthropologist for the University of New Mexico’s Office of the Medical Investigator, told the magazine. “But when you put them all together and you’re disoriented and you’re lost ... it’s not survivable.”
Solution: Stop Trying to Keep Them Out
Rather than blaming smugglers and politicians, or activists and NGOs who encourage mass “migration” into the US, credentialed entities are pointing the finger at Texas’ efforts to defend the integrity of its border with Mexico.
“[I]n recent years, Texas has deployed its National Guard to increase enforcement on its segment of the border, and that in turn appears to have forced migrants over the state line,” HCN states. “With this increased enforcement ... we are seeing more and more people getting pushed into that area,” Daniel Martínez asserted.
Martinez, co-director of the University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute, is referring to what pro-illegal alien activists call “funneling.” The term is meant to decry any attempts to enforce border security, which is said to cause “desperate” “migrants” to head for the treacherous wilds of areas such as Sunland Park.
“Prevention Through Deterrence and its progeny are a set of policies explicitly aimed at forcing irregular migrants onto ‘hostile terrain’ and making crossing the US southern border so dangerous that people are discouraged from even trying,” elitist-connected NGO Human Rights Watch states. “The policies have intentionally funneled migrants into crossing points where there are life-threatening conditions. Deterrence policies include punitive immigration policies and dangerous infrastructure, such as border walls, razor wire, armed soldiers, surveillance technology, and, in Texas, river buoys equipped with saw blades and other infrastructure.”
It's wholly akin to blaming a homeowner for locking his front door and forcing a burglar to make for an upstairs window, at risk of breaking his neck along the way. While the death of any individual is a tragedy, Americans who have experienced the full brunt of the enormous negative social and economic consequences of massive unchecked illegal immigration into the US under the Biden administration are not likely to feel much sympathy anymore for those who implore them to leave their doors unlatched in the name of “social justice.”
