12 Border-Crossers Die, 4 Still Missing in Desert

At least 12 men trying to cross a remote stretch of scorching desert from Mexico into southwestern Arizona died from exposure Wednesday and a search was launched for additional victims.

Border Patrol officials in Yuma said 11 men who survived after trudging more than 30 miles north through the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona were hospitalized.

The search continued into the night for four other men who were missing in the rock-strewn wasteland between the Mexican border and Interstate 8.

Southern Arizona has become a popular crossing point for illegal immigrants since Border Patrol crackdowns in Texas and California prompted people to try to enter the United States through more isolated, inhospitable areas. Scores have died from exposure.

Wednesday’s deaths are believed to be the most among one group of border-crossers in the area since 13 Salvadorans died of exposure in July 1980.

Stephen Norman, the Border Patrol’s deputy chief patrol agent in Yuma, said agents patrolling the area by air first spotted five men struggling through the desert about 10 a.m.

The men, all of whom were suffering from exhaustion and extreme dehydration, said others had been left behind in temperatures that reached 115 degrees.

“That’s the air temperature; the floor of the desert could be 130 degrees,” Norman said. “It’s almost physically impossible for a man to carry enough water to survive in conditions like that.”

By midafternoon, border patrolmen and Marines using helicopters had found 11 bodies sprawled on the desert floor, all victims of the punishing heat. Twelve more men were found alive, but one of them died later at the medical center.

It is believed that some of the undocumented immigrants were from the state of Veracruz.

Two of the 11 survivors were admitted to the intensive care unit at Yuma Regional Medical Center in serious condition with heat exhaustion, hospital spokeswoman Michele Cohen said. The others were in fair condition, she said.

Cohen said all of those being treated are between 17 and 35.

“From information we have now, they all appear to be Latin American,” she said.

The survivors told of four more men, still missing and presumed to be somewhere in the wildlife refuge that stretches 60 miles north from the border to near Interstate 8 east of Yuma.

“We intend to work this until we’ve made sure that there’s no one left out there,” Marice Moore, a spokesman for the Border Patrol, said Wednesday night.

Survivors told officers that smugglers had driven them across the border in a truck and then abandoned them Saturday, telling them that the walk to Interstate 8 would take them only a couple of hours. The smugglers said they would get water and return to the group but never did, Border Patrol spokesman Rene Noriega said.

Officials said that even in much cooler conditions, the 60-mile trek would have taken several days.

Norman said there are no towns, ranches or water holes.

“It’s a vast, desolate open space,” he said. “Nothing but sand and rocks. Those people were out in the middle of nowhere.”

The Border Patrol said Wednesday’s tragedy raised to more than 35 the number of would-be immigrants who have died in the Arizona desert since September. Between September 1999 and September 2000, 106 people died.

“People are very, very ill-prepared to understand the distances and dangers,” said the Rev. Robin Hoover, a minister from Tucson who has started setting up water stations for those who try to cross the desert on foot. “They have no idea what they are encountering.”

Claudia Smith, executive director of the Oceanside office of California Rural Legal Assistance, a leading migrant-rights advocate, called Wednesday’s deaths “an entirely foreseeable tragedy as long as U.S. policy is to push migrants farther out of the urban area and out of public view and into more desolate and dangerous areas.”

Smith has campaigned for an end to Operation Gatekeeper, the Border Patrol crackdown started by the Clinton administration.

“Pushing migrants into dangerous areas is an abuse of the right of a country to control its borders,” Smith said.

Smith has staged several protests and has one planned Friday at Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego, where indigent migrants are buried. Smith recently tried unsuccessfully to get the Bush administration to reevaluate the Operation Gatekeeper program.

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Times staff writers Edward J. Boyer and Tony Perry and the Associated Press contributed to this story. Malic reported from Los Angeles and Ellingwood reported from Yuma.