A deadly detour: Migrant deaths spike outside El Paso

First responders and others in New Mexico attribute the rise in the heat-related deaths largely to Texas' Operation Lone Star, which hardened the border in the city's urban core.

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. — In each of the last two summers, Laura Mae Williams, who recovers bodies for the New Mexico Medical Investigator’s Office, has had to visit the U.S.-Mexico borderlands multiple times a week. 

"It’s not uncommon for me to come down for one body that’s been found, and then Border Patrol finds another one or maybe even two additional ones in different locations,” Williams said. 

It used to be rare for migrants to die after having crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the desert just west of El Paso, Texas, over the state line. The Medical Investigator’s Office, part of the University of New Mexico Health System, used to recover only a handful of bodies a year. But this year so far, the office has recovered 121 such sets of remains, breaking last year’s record of 116. It’s more than a thirteenfold increase from five years ago. 

Unlike the vast, remote deserts of Arizona, where migrants have died in significant numbers for years, the area experiencing this spike in deaths is relatively small, hemmed in by highways and the western exurbs of El Paso.

In many cases, people have died within a few yards of suburban subdivisions and paved roads. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/migrant-deaths-spike-new-mexico-rcna175794

---