US Border Patrol uses desert as weapon to kill thousands of migrants, report says

[Judi Lynn]

US Border Patrol uses desert as ‘weapon’ to kill thousands of migrants, report says

Arizona advocacy group says agents chase border crossers from Mexico into hostile terrain in a strategy that leaves many injured, dead or lost

Rory Carroll in Nogales, Sonora@rorycarroll72
Wednesday 7 December 2016 14.10 EST

The US Border Patrol agency has engineered the death and disappearance of tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants by using the desert wilderness as a “weapon”, according to an advocacy group.

Agents chase and scatter border crossers across hostile terrain in a strategy that leaves many people injured, dead or lost, turning the US’s south-western frontier into a “vast graveyard of the missing”, the Arizona-based group No More Deaths said on Wednesday.

“The known disappearance of thousands of people in the remote wilderness of the US–Mexico border zone marks one of the great historical crimes of our day,” the group said in a blistering report, the first of three reports documenting alleged abuses by Border Patrol.

In addition to deadly apprehension methods it accused the federal agency, which deploys about 18,000 agents on the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, of sabotaging humanitarian aid efforts and discriminating against undocumented people in emergency responses.

No More Deaths, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, worked with volunteers from another group, La Coalición de Derechos Humanos, on the 34-page report. It drew on a survey of 58 border crossers and 544 cases from the Missing Migrant Crisis Line. Tens of thousands have gone missing since the 1990s, including 1,200 last year, it said.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/07/report-us-border-patrol-desert-weapon-immigrants-mexico

Editorials, etc.:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016172487

[HassleCat]

1. What should they do?

So those who escape should be treated how? Is there some way to keep them from running into the desert? Please don't say shoot them or something like that.

[Mika]

4. The conditions they are fleeing from must be extremely bad.

What's your idea? Let them die?

[HassleCat]

6. Don't know

I think they try to follow them, but they probably evade capture by running deeper into the desert and hiding. I suppose we could make a greater effort to follow them and bring them back.

[Travis_0004]

2. What a stupid article

Of course they patrol the heavily populated areas, and dont patrol the rural areas as heavy. There are not as many people in that area, and so there isnt a need for as many border agents. Dont wander into a desert unprepared and blame somebody else.

[Mika]

5. Hard to lay blame when one is dead.

Imagine the horrific conditions for people to up and leave, crossing dangerous desert conditions, as well as drowning in the Rio Grande. These people are fleeing "democratic" countries, and have little or no protections if they make it to the USA.

[Mika]

3. Good article to point out to the anti-Cubaists...

.. who constantly mewl on with "why do people leave on rafts and boats"? (And into the welcoming arms of the US's wet foot/dry foot and Cuban Adjustment Act policies for Cubans only.)