Border crossings are down, but human remains are still being found
Jul 12, 2017, 5:00 AM | Updated: 11:19 am
(AP Photo/Brian Skoloff, File)
(AP Photo/Brian Skoloff, File)
Even though border crossings are down, a high number of the remains of migrants are still being found in the Arizona desert.
As of today, 2,702 remains of people suspected to be undocumented border crossers have been found since 2001 according to Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office which receives the remains found along most of the Arizona/Mexico border.
That number includes 87 human remains found already this year.
“If what we’ve had so far almost halfway through 2017 is any barometer, we’ll probably in the 160s to 170 remains recovered in 2017,” said Gregory Hess Chief Medical Examiner for Pima County.
The highest year was 2010 when they had 222 remains, found but those numbers can be misleading because they vary up and down.
“When people say that the deaths are up in this given year, it’s more that we found more people,” he said. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean that they died in 2017, we don’t know exactly when some of these people died.”
Even if border crossings stopped completely today, he said, we could still potentially be finding remains for years to come.
Sometimes border crossers make it all the way to Maricopa County and still need help, said MCSO Search and Rescue coordinator Christopher Pittmann.
“A lot of times they’re just not realizing how far they have to go,” Pittmann said. “And by the time they get up into Maricopa County and especially in the Southwest valley; they’re dehydrated, they’re overheated, they have no food … they need rescuing.”
Nowadays, many migrants are for help themselves, he said.
“They have what’s called a 911-only phone, it’s a cellphone that’ll only go to 911,” he said. “We can’t generally get a GPS location off of these phones.”
Search crews are then able to ask questions about their location using sights, sounds and geographical markers such as mountains. Unfortunately, many times they barely find people in time, or it’s even too late.
“When are finding these people, they start stripping clothes off,” he said “They are in very bad shape.”
They’re confused and that’s when an IV is immediately necessary just to save their life, he said.
