EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican officials say drownings, dehydration, trains and violent crime have claimed the lives of 46 migrants in their territory so far this year.
In a report issued last week, Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) said the Rio Grande has claimed the most victims from January to the end of August with 22, followed by dehydration with seven. The rest died from falls from moving trains or the border wall, gun violence, illnesses or malnutrition.
Thirty-seven of the bodies recovered in Mexican territory were adult males, eight were females and one was a male child. Most of the identified victims were Central Americans, according to the report.
This past Sunday in Juarez, a Cuban migrant was arrested in connection with the death of another Cuban whose body was found inside a car.
The grim tally is much higher when adding the migrants who died on U.S. soil and those who are missing. According to the International Organization for Migration (OIM), 301 deaths of migrants have been recorded along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021.
Last year, the U.S. Border Patrol recovered 250 migrant bodies on American soil.
The rise in deaths coincides with higher numbers of migrants coming across both the U.S.-Mexico and the Mexico-Guatemala border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has recorded 1.27 million unauthorized migrant encounters just on the southern border in fiscal year 2021. That compares to the 400,651 migrant encounters documented by CBP in fiscal year 2020.
INM officers in Mexico have detained 147,033 migrants from Central America, Haiti and other countries in calendar year 2021, three times as many as in all of 2020.