Historically, Border Patrol’s El Paso sector — which includes all 180 miles of New Mexico’s border with Mexico and 84 miles of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in West Texas — has had among the fewest migrant deaths across the southern border.
That changed in late December 2022, according to an investigation by The Texas Tribune and Source New Mexico, when the city of El Paso joined forces with Gov. Greg Abbott to participate in his signature border mission, called Operation Lone Star.
By 2024, the El Paso sector had become the deadliest place for migrants to cross along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.
From January 2023 to August 2024, 299 human remains were reported in the El Paso sector, the most of any sector along the southern border, according to the most recent data available from federal government data. That’s more than double the number of cases reported during the 20 months prior, when 122 remains were recorded before El Paso had adopted Operation Lone Star.
Since El Paso joined Texas’ border mission in 2022, migrant remains discovered in the El Paso sector have increased every year, even as they have declined in every other part of the border. . . .
Though many factors determine where and when someone crosses an international border — including federal immigration policies, organized crime and natural disasters — experts and advocates say any policy that pushes migrants into the desert will likely cost lives.
Immigrant rights groups and researchers say more migrants are taking deadlier routes to enter the country since Texas launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 — flooding the border with state troopers, National Guard and miles of razor wire — as the federal government’s ever-changing immigration policies have delayed or blocked migrants who want to claim asylum in the U.S.
“Any state lawmaker or local leader should be aware that these policies come at a human cost,” said Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, an immigrant rights advocacy group in El Paso. “So anyone that decides to approach this type of enforcement is making a decision that they can live with these deaths.”
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