New Government Report Finds Deaths have Doubled along the United States-Mexico Border

A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the deaths of undocumented immigrants along the United States-Mexico border have doubled since 1995. The data, compiled in a report titled Illegal Immigration: Border-Crossing Deaths Have Doubled Since 1995, aggregated data from the Border Patrol’s Border Safety Initiative (BSI) adopted in 1995, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), and state registries in order to show that the number of deaths along the border have increased despite the fact that there was not a corresponding increase in the number undocumented immigrants entering the United States. More than three quarters of the increase is attributable to deaths by exposure (frost bite or dehydration) occurring in the Arizona desert where many immigrants have started to cross due to the ongoing militarization of the United States border that has made crossing in other areas close to impossible. According to the report, deaths have increased from 241 in 1999 to 472 in 2005.