Two Bodies Found, Raising Toll in Migrant Tragedy to 14

U.S. Border Patrol searchers Thursday found the bodies of two more undocumented border crossers in the Arizona desert, raising to 14 the death toll from an ill-fated trek across a sun-scorched no man’s land, officials said.

Rescuers also found a survivor, a Mexican man who was taken to Yuma Regional Medical Center in critical condition suffering from heat exhaustion. Eleven migrants who were part of the same group and were rescued a day earlier remained hospitalized, most in good condition. A search continued for one more person believed missing.

Somber U.S. and Mexican officials told reporters here that the migrants were believed to have been led across the border by smugglers last weekend. After hiking for as many as five days, they were abandoned with little water in a desolate expanse the size of Delaware, about 30 miles from the nearest highway.

A Mexican consular official said the immigrants were destined for North Carolina.

“If you want to find isolation,” said Johnny Williams, Western regional director for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, “you should go to this part of the desert.”

Searchers on the ground and in helicopters had found clusters of bodies after four survivors reported they had been part of a group of 27 that set out Saturday. Some of the victims apparently had sought to stave off death by finding shade; others had stripped off clothes, said Yuma County Sheriff Ralph E. Ogden, whose deputies joined the search. He said the investigators found only a couple of empty water bottles, but those had been left far behind.

The body of the last victim was found, along with the gravely ill survivor, early Thursday. The two had made it to within a few miles of Interstate 8.

The hospitalized survivors, all men and most from the southern Mexican state of Veracruz, were in Border Patrol custody. They were being interviewed by investigators from both countries who were working jointly in hopes of capturing the smugglers, the officials said.

Roberto Rodriguez, a senior consular official from the Mexican Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Yuma that agents had identified a potential suspect in Mexico but had made no arrests. U.S. officials would say only that investigators were following promising leads.

Smugglers whose clients die en route can be prosecuted under a U.S. law that carries the possibility of the death sentence.

“We will do everything humanly possible to bring those responsible for this tragedy to justice,” the INS’ Williams said.

Officials said the deaths were the most among a single group of illegal immigrants on the Southwest border in at least two decades. The tragedy comes at a time when the United States and Mexico are discussing ways to increase the number of legal entries.

The U.S. State Department and the Mexican Foreign Ministry issued a rare joint statement on the deaths, saying “this unfortunate tragedy ratifies the urgent need for our governments to continue working to achieve a new agreement on immigration and border security.”

The communique noted that a high-level migration working group, representing the two governments, is to meet next month in San Antonio “to discuss specific measures to avoid tragedies of this kind in the future and to promote orderly and safe migration flows.”

Frank Sharry, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which favors increased legal immigration into the United States, said the deaths would propel discussions over broader immigration policy.

“I think it’ll have a huge impact in the United States and in the discussions going on between the United States and Mexico,” he said.

Critics say the escalating death count in remote areas results from a 7-year-old U.S. government crackdown aimed at staunching illegal entries in former hot spots such as those just south of San Diego. Migrants have increasingly paid to be smuggled in rural areas to avoid the buildup, which in California is known as Operation Gatekeeper.

Williams defended the U.S. strategy, which has helped reduce unlawful crossings around San Diego, for example, to levels not seen since the early 1970s. He blamed the fatalities instead on “leeches” who charge $1,000 or more per client and at times abandon them in life-threatening conditions.

Such conditions confronted the migrants as they traversed the remote San Cristobal Valley, where a recent heat wave across southern Arizona sent temperatures as high as 115 degrees. The area, which encompasses a wildlife refuge and a military bombing range, is vast. Roads are few and usually accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles. Help is far away.

“It’s rocks, sand, desert,” said Cyril Atherton, an agent in the Border Patrol’s station in Wellton. “It’s nasty.”

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Times staff writers James F. Smith in Mexico City and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.