. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner
TUCSON – The medical examiner in southern Arizona’s Pima County can tally the costs of illegal immigration differently than other county officials.
Like the others, he can look at budgets and see how much it costs for his staff to deal with the waves of people who cross each year through Arizona, the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexico border.
But he can also look at the bodies that have forced this county to expand its morgue and get a much more vivid picture of the toll border crossings take on people.
"We have had to work harder and pay some overtime costs," said chief medical examiner Dr. Bruce Parks. "Over time we’re increasing staffing, which in some ways is related" to border crossers’ deaths.
Despite the efforts of federal officials and humanitarian groups to prevent them, deaths in Arizona have been mounting in recent years as migrants have tried crossing through more remote and dangerous desert areas to avoid increased enforcement.
Arizona accounted for more than half of the deaths of migrants who died in the last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, while trying to enter the United States.
Of the total 473 deaths nationally, 216 occurred within the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which covers all but the westernmost portion of the Arizona-Mexico border, including Pima County. Factor in the 51 deaths in the patrol’s Yuma sector, including a handful of deaths in easternmost California, and more than half the migrants dying perished in Arizona.
In July 2005, Tucson sector agents recovered the bodies or remains of 72 illegal immigrants who died in the desert – most ever in one month, spokesman Gustavo Soto said. Nearly all of those died from heat exposure, according to Parks.
This July, thanks in part to robust summer rains, the Tucson sector recorded only 19 deaths. However, 10 deaths have been reported during the first nine days in August, versus two for the same period a year earlier.
Nationwide, at least 291 illegal immigrants died during border crossing attempts from Oct. 1 through Aug. 6, including 75 deaths due to heat exposure, 45 drownings, and 42 motor vehicle incidents.
The migrant deaths have forced the medical examiner’s office in Pima County to devote more resources to handling them. That has included requiring overtime to moving to hire a sixth medical examiner to doubling the morgue’s capacity so it can now hold 240 bodies.
Before the expansion, the medical examiner’s morgue held approximately 120 bodies and was nearly always at capacity. The new $237,000 stainless steel refrigeration unit, built to accommodate another 120 bodies, was readied earlier in the summer.
Jennifer Allen, director of the Border Action Network, an immigrant rights organization, lamented "the fact that government agencies have to end up investing resources in dealing with migrants’ dead bodies, as opposed to developing means and policies that will stop the deaths and provide for the economic and social realities in the country."
The nation, she said, needs to find policies and solutions that help immigrants.
Once Pima County’s new morgue unit is in operation, it will allow the office to mothball a refrigerated truck tractor-trailer unit that the county first rented, then bought, to store an overflow of some 60 to 80 bodies and skeletal remains.
The trailer has been in constant use, said Deputy Medical Examiner Eric Peters. "We knew it was only a stopgap measure," he said. "We realized the problem would remain and having a full sized tractor-trailer in our driveway literally was an obstruction. We needed to build something more permanent."
Pima County’s medical examiners performed about 1,400 autopsies in all last year.
They examined 197 bodies of deceased border crossers, Parks said.
"The great majority of them were autopsies," he said, "though we actually had to alter that process for a couple of months because we were so overwhelmed."
In those cases they conducted external examinations to make sure there was nothing suspicious or unexpected for the conditions under which the deaths occurred.
Parks said his office examined 146 dead border crossers in 2002, 156 in 2003 and 171 in 2004; the overall number of autopsies performed by his office ranged roughly from 1,350 to 1,450 per year.
Figures are much lower in two other Arizona border counties. Pima County handles autopsies for the fourth.
Janice Fields, business manager for United Pathology, which handles medical examiner’s duties under contract with Cochise County, said there have been six migrant deaths since January, versus 12 as of Aug. 10 last year. There were 17 migrant deaths in Cochise County in 2005, she said.
Officials at the Yuma Regional Medical Center’s pathology department, which handles medical examiner’s duties in Yuma County, didn’t provide figures on migrant deaths.
But the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector reported 35 deaths of illegal immigrants so far during the current fiscal year, ahead of last year’s pace.
Parks said the migrant workload in his office represents a "moderate strain."
"And we’re still trying to get some of the work done that’s left over from last year and still trying to identify bodies from 2005 and get people home," he said.
In general, if a dead person has no identification, "we will not be able to identify them. Sometimes we are able to look at them and compare the body to a picture." Other times, a relative or another person who survived the desert trek is able to make an identification.
Tattoos, scars and fingerprints help. So, often, does the Mexican government.
"Thankfully, we have a very strong relationship with the consulate of Mexico, and one or two days a week they’re down here," Peters said.
Consular officials photograph personal effects and incorporate that and other information, such as tattoos and scars, into a computer database, Peters said.
But delays in identification typically stem from language barriers, inability to find relatives or the difficulties next of kin may encounter in trying to arrange for the return of remains, he said.
About 30 percent of the bodies or remains can’t be identified.
First of all, where is the question?
Second, you quote: "The nation, she said, needs to find policies and solutions that help immigrants." NOT! The nation needs to find policies that help CITIZENS. LEGAL CITIZENS. We do not need to be throwing more money to help illegals. Sorry. We have enough legal citizens in need, in homeless shelters, who can’t afford health care, etc… Our first responsibility is to them.
I truly feel sorry for anyone trying to come here that dies, legal or illegal. But if they decide to come here illegally, that is the chance they take.
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