In an unparalleled incident, 54 immigrants were saved from a perilous situation in the Rio Grande River, a section that separates Texas and New Mexico.
This rescue operation took place on Tuesday, as confirmed by the authorities.
According to The Independent, the Sunland Park, New Mexico, fire department received an emergency call on Tuesday regarding a group of individuals stranded in the Rio Grande. This particular section of the river, located near El Paso, Texas, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua, has been the site of multiple immigrant fatalities in recent weeks.
The rescue operation was a collective effort involving 30 divers, four local fire departments, El Paso County Search and Rescue, and the Border Patrol. Six of the migrants were suffering from hypothermia due to prolonged exposure to the water, and three were transported to local hospitals in non-critical condition.
Daniel Medrano of Sunland Park Fire told KTSM, The smugglers from the south side, from Mexico, are telling the migrants to hide in the water. Some of these migrants had been in the water for three or four hours, so they had been in the water for quite a while. All the individuals rescued were reportedly adults.
This particular stretch of the border has proven to be especially lethal. Earlier this month, four immigrants succumbed to heat stroke, and another three were found dead in late June. The El Paso Times estimates that around 20 people have lost their lives while attempting to cross the border in this area over the past month.
The El Paso border sector, which includes the location of the recent rescue, has seen immigrant deaths more than double between 2022 and 2023. This alarming trend is expected to worsen with the continuation of extreme heat and the Biden administration's tightening of legal asylum access.
Alan Lizarraga, spokesman for El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights, told Border Report, Since we saw the (Biden) executive order and since we saw the application of asylum getting much harder, weve been talking about this. Weve been saying that migrants were going to take alternate dangerous routes to reach safety in the U.S.
In the previous month, the Biden administration implemented a rule enabling the President to close the border to legal asylum-seekers between ports of entry if the average daily border crossings exceed 2,500. This move has been met with criticism, as it is known that tightening border security at ports of entry pushes immigrants towards remote and deadly areas along the expansive, predominantly desert border between the U.S. and Mexico.
This strategy of "prevention through deterrence" was first adopted by the Clinton administration's Border Patrol in 1994. The aim was to tighten security at common border crossings like Tijuana and El Paso, thereby forcing immigrants into the backcountry and potentially putting them in "mortal danger."
Login