Immigrant deaths up sharply in South Texas

HOUSTON - The number of dead immigrants found in South Texas has already surpassed last year's total heading into the two hottest months of 2008.

Since the start of the fiscal year in October, Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector has found 67 bodies after recovering 61 all of the previous year. The sector runs through the three easternmost counties along the Rio Grande and north along the Gulf of Mexico to almost Victoria.

It is not clear why the deaths are up in the sector. Border Patrol officials point to tougher border security in Arizona, a long string of days with temperatures approaching 100 degrees and smugglers they say don't care for their human cargo.

``It has already hit 104 (degrees),'' said Daniel Doty, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's sector, said in today's editions of the Houston Chronicle.

``It is generally a three-day walk around the checkpoint, and they are told it is just a few hours,'' he said of the Border Patrol's checkpoints on two northbound highways. ``We've got these smugglers saying it is a short walk, here is a gallon of water.''

The Border Patrol has a Search Trauma and Rescue Team that focuses on the sector's most dangerous immigration route through Brooks County.

Immigrants on foot can become disoriented in the heat and vast scrubland north of the border.

``Sometimes (officers) find bones scattered; last month they found three skulls,'' said Brooks County Sheriff Baldi Lozano, whose county of expansive ranchland is one of the highest-trafficked routes north. ``Inside the brush there is no water, no wind blowing.''

The most recent body found was Tuesday night six miles south of Falfurrias. A black T-shirt adorned with images of skulls covered the man's face. Only a few religious cards filled his wallet.

The little that immigrants tend to travel with can make it difficult to identify their bodies.

That posed an additional challenge for an illegal immigrant who made it to Houston this week and tried to alert someone to look for a woman she had traveled with but who died along the way.

The woman, who identified herself as Karina but asked to remain anonymous, said she and the other woman fell behind a larger group of immigrants guided by a smuggler.

She tried to help the other woman but she collapsed and died, perhaps from a scorpion sting or snake bite, Karina said.

Now she is trying to make sure the body is found and sent back to Honduras.

``I want to get word to her family,'' Karina said. ``They should know what happened to her so they can retrieve the body.''

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