Migrants trekking across the Arizona borderlands have died at higher rates in the two decades since stepped up enforcement began funneling them into remote, hostile desert and mountain regions.
A sweeping new analysis released Monday by the University of Arizona Binational Migration Institute provides a multidiscipline look at migrant border death investigations in Arizona over 30 years. It draws on the expertise of anthropologists, geographers, other specialists and Pima County Chief Medical Examiner Greg Hess, whose office tracks the recoveries statewide. Daniel Martinez, an institute co-director, said migrants are perishing in some of the most treacherous and rugged terrain within southern Arizona.
