US President Joe Biden will be in Mexico from this Sunday to discuss with his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in particular migration issues. More and more migrants are dying trying to cross the border and associations are now fighting to have their bodies returned to their families.
With our correspondent in Mexico, Emmanuelle Steels
More than 2.2 million migrants who passed through Mexico were apprehended by US Border Patrol in 2022. This record number comes with a rising death toll as migrants face increasing risks to avoid immigration controls. On the American side, 853 migrants were found dead last year. In Texas, civil organizations are fighting for the bodies of these migrants to be returned to their families.
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Migrants drown in the Rio Grande River or die in the desert, says Eduardo Canales, who directs the South Texas Center for Human Rights. His organization has been fighting for ten years to demand that the authorities identify the bodies of migrants, who are often sent to the mass grave.
” A few years ago, we realized that Brooks County, in which we are based, does not take DNA samples from these bodies, although the law requires it to do so. And this county is a real deadly corridor for migrants. It’s a humanitarian disaster “, he laments.
More than 200 corpses found in the past two years
In this region at the southern tip of Texas, more than 200 corpses of migrants have been found in the past two years, in desert areas. Soon, about thirty bodies will be exhumed from a local cemetery to be identified. An effort led by a group of NGOs, who accuse Texas Governor Greg Abbott of having cut off funds for these operations. Its priority is elsewhere: to prevent migrants from passing through.
” It is the policies that cause these deaths. It is ridiculous to force migrants to go through the river, through the desert, when they come here to work “, insists Eduardo Canales. To avoid these deaths, civil organizations are calling for humane policies and not just police measures and walls to block the way for migrants.