Since the U.S. Border Patrol first began tracking migrant deaths in 1998, fiscal 2021 was the deadliest on record. Five hundred and fifty-seven migrants perished trying to illegally enter the United States through the Southern border, an increase from the two prior fiscal years when the mortality count was 254 and 300, respectively.
The 23-year deceased-at-the-border total is about 7,000.
Those tragic totals likely are an undercount because when state and local law enforcement find bodies near the border, they often don’t interact with federal authorities.
In their determination to reach the United States, migrants die from hypothermia and dehydration. Some lose their way and die alone.
But since Border Patrol began keeping an official count of those whose northbound journeys ended in heartbreak for their families, the White House under several administrations has been oblivious to the thousands of lives lost.
Also excluded from the official Border Patrol body count, but unquestionably attributable to President Joe Biden’s administration’s defiance toward border enforcement, are the 54 dead and 58 injured in a human smuggling operation that ended in a truck crash.
The truck carried people from Mexico, the Northern Triangle, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador. It crashed rounding a curve in southern Mexico, and sent 166 travelers bound for the United States tumbling to the pavement. Most of the dead were Guatemalans.
From the North, Canadian experts issued a “warning shot” that illegal immigration into the United States will inevitably spike.
