Desert Proves Fatal for Illegal Immigrants

U . S . - M E X I C A N   B O R D E R, July 14, 2004 -- A crumbled border marker, a barbed wire fence, and a dusty trail to nowhere is all that separates the United States from Mexico along most of the 350-mile Arizona border in the middle of the Sonora Desert.

The border has become a deadly front line in the battle over immigration reform and the war against international terrorism.

Of late, many Mexicans are mistaking the proposed immigration reform bill for a total amnesty program for anyone who can get into the country before the bill passes.

If passed into law, the bill would provide illegal immigrants living in the United States a way to gain permanent legal residency, provide labor safeguards, and make it easier for immigrant families to reunite and stay together.

The Office of Homeland Security has directed $10 million to the Arizona Border Control Initiative to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants and possible terrorists to enter the country. Now many illegal aliens are forced to cross the unforgiving Arizona desert to avoid the stepped-up security measures at the traditional border crossings.

"It diverted the migration pattern into hazardous and deadly areas of the border for people to cross and the death toll has set a new record each year," said the Rev. John Fife, a local Presbyterian minister and immigration activist who mobilized the "No More Deaths" aid project in response to the crisis.

More than 150 people are believed to have died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border this year — 78 while attempting to cross the Arizona desert.

The Border Patrol and humanitarian groups believe there are many more whose bodies will never be found.

"As the militarization has increased, particularly in the Arizona Border Control Initiative this year, where they have added 100 more agents and more helicopters, people have been forced into even more isolated areas of the desert," said Fife. "So in a sense we've had a record number of deaths to date this year, and I anticipate we will set a new record this year."

College students and labor union volunteers have set up remote water and first aid stations in the desert, but they are too few and too difficult to find for most making the trek.

Beefed-up U.S. border security, Mexico's declining economic conditions, and universal confusion over a proposed guest-worker program have created a perfect storm this summer in the Arizona desert for those determined to get into the United States.

A Hopeful Border Run

In Agua Prieta, Mexico, Luis Ortega prepared to cross the border. Ortega said he needed to get back to his job in Chicago, but couldn't get a visa or a green card to go back legally.

Like thousands of other Mexicans each month, he took a two-day-long bus trip to the border, where he waited to meet his "coyote" — a smuggler he paid $1,700, his life savings, to get across the border and into Chicago.

Wearing tennis shoes and carrying a gallon of water, Ortega expressed concern about getting lost in the desert.

"Muy peligroso. Si, it's very dangerous. We're very nervous," he said.

Since Ortega's last illegal entry four years ago, the United States has built 20-foot steel fences in the major border towns, added nearly 300 more border patrol agents to the Tucson region, and started using aerial reconnaissance drones and ground movement sensors along the border.

Some illegal immigrants slip into U.S. border towns through storm drains that empty on the Mexican side of the border. Ray Borane, the mayor of Douglas, Ariz., welded bars on the city's storm drains to stem the tide of illegal aliens and the financial drain on city's services whenever someone is injured on his side of the border.

"The Border Patrol will not take them into custody, because if they take them into custody, they'll have to incur the expense," Borane said.

Overloaded vans trying to escape the highway patrols and checkpoints throughout southern Arizona frequently roll over; those injured end up at the region's only trauma center, which is averaging 40 documented and undocumented patients a month.

Over the course of a year, said a hospital administrator, treatment costs will run in the neighborhood of $12 million a year — money that will, for the most part, not be reimbursed.

BORSTAR — the Border Patrol's search, trauma and rescue team — regularly finds people lost in the desert or stranded by their coyotes, without enough water to continue or head back to Mexico.

Patrol officers later found Luis Ortega in such a situation. He had been walking for four days and had been without water for at least 24 hours.

After receiving first aid, the illegals are processed and sent back to the border for repatriation. Most will likely to make another attempt within a few days.

American-sponsored commercials airing on Mexican television are trying to discourage illegal crossings by citing the dangers.

It's a hard sell in light of Mexico's declining economic conditions and the recent lifting of North American Free Trade Agreement tariffs on its agricultural imports.

"[The United States is] flooding Mexico with our heavily subsidized foods, and small farmers that were able to support their families are being forced by the hundreds and thousands off the land and have nowhere to go but north," said Fife.

Repatriation to Reduce Border Pressure

To reduce the pressure on the Arizona border, the United States started free repatriation flights back to the Mexican interior this week for any detainees who would volunteer to go that far south, instead of waiting to be merely transported to the Mexican side of the border.

A free flight home for illegal Mexican immigrants is a $28,000-per-flight charge to American taxpayers.

"The bottom line is that you can't put a price on life and what the Border Patrol is trying to do with this program is save lives," said Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame.

Last year, the government chartered flights to fly detainees from Arizona to Texas border towns where they were involuntarily repatriated to Mexico.

This year's flights will be traveling deep into the interior of Mexico to prevent a quick turnaround and another illegal attempt to enter the country.

"We are going to interview every person to make sure they are Mexican and second that they accept the voluntary repatriation," said Mexican Consul Juan Manuel Calderon.

The Mexican government delayed the program until the United States made diplomatic assurances not to force anyone back to interior Mexico who didn't want to go.

But many detainees at a detention center in Nogales, Ariz., said they would decline the free, three-hour flight south in favor of the standard shuttle back across the border in towns like Douglas, Ariz. — presumably so they can quickly try another illegal crossing.

"I'd rather not because I have to work," said immigration detainee Angel Martinez.

The U.S. government has budgeted $13 million for these experimental repatriation flights to Mexico, with the Mexican government picking up the tab for the bus fares for the rest of the deportees' trips home.

"It's like anything the government does when they have a problem they can't solve," said Douglas Mayor Borane. "They just throw money at it."

ABC News' Mike Cerre filed this report for Nightline.