By
The Associated Press
HOUSTON - Despite billions of dollars spent on increased border enforcement efforts, illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexican border has not been reduced, and the death count for those trying to get into the United States is rising, according to a University of Houston study released yesterday.
Preliminary findings of a study by the school's Center for Immigration Research show stepped-up border enforcement by U.S. authorities forces migrants to choose more risky routes into the country and has contributed directly to the rising death toll.
"The U.S. border policy is not working," Jacqueline Hagan, the research center's co-director, said. "The white crosses and unidentified border graves lining the landscape of the U.S.-Mexico border are evidence of a failed border policy."
An Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman in Washington, however, said the study proved the agency's border control policies were working and disputed the study's conclusions. Researchers failed to take into account the effects of smugglers who actively recruit immigrants, Russ Bergeron said.
"Before the establishment of the border control strategy and the buildup of the border at certain key crossing points, individuals could just basically walk across in broad vistas and wide areas where there was very little physical or geographic impediment," he said.
"Once the buildup of the Southwest border began ... those convenient crossing points were basically shut down, and as a result, smugglers began to capitalize on the desires of people to cross and started taking them into much more hazardous areas. But if they encounter the Border Patrol or if the circumstances get difficult, they just abandon their load."
"INS has a tendency to criminalize migration," Hagan responded. "That's what they love to do. There's a lot of good smugglers out there, too."
Hagan acknowledged being an advocate for migrants but defended the Ford Foundation-financed study as unbiased.
A review of county-by-county death records along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border showed a statistical relationship between enforcement and fatalities, she said.
"There is no evidence to show it is curtailing or stopping undocumented migration," Hagan said. "The argument we're making is it sure in heck is having human consequences. And that is: migrant death is going up.
"The real question here is if we're going to implement a policy that is not being effective and is putting more people in danger ... then I think we have to ask ourselves, at what point do we really want to continue to implement this policy?"
Border enforcement became more aggressive in 1993 when then-President Clinton unveiled a new strategy aimed at curtailing the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico. According to the study, the INS became one of the fastest growing federal agencies, nearly tripling its budget from 1993 to 1999 to $4.2 billion, with the bulk of the money spent on border enforcement.
The study, however, said, despite the "enormous financial cost ... and numerous official statements reflecting success, there has been no evidence that overall levels of undocumented migration along the border have decreased."
Instead, death totals due to exposure, dehydration and starvation soared in the late 1990s, "after undocumented migration was redirected to Eastern California, Arizona and South and Central Texas," the study said.
"As migrants are redirected from well-established crossing points, they are forced to adopt more difficult crossing strategies, which exposes them to more dangerous desert, mountain and arid ranch land," Nestor Rodriguez, co-director of the study, said.
In fiscal year 1999, for example, INS statistics showed 231 migrant deaths on the U.S. side of the border. The following year, the toll grew to 369, up 60 percent. Mexican government figures cited by the researchers showed migrant deaths on both sides of the border were 356 in calendar year 1999, then 491 in 2000, a 38 percent increase.
"The cause of these deaths are directly related to enforcement," Hagan said.
She said the deaths were predictable because efforts to close a border lead to "crisis."
"Unless you put manpower right across the border hand by hand, you're never going to stop this. It doesn't matter how many billions of dollars you put down there, how many Border Patrol (officers). You'd have to stretch them across the whole border to keep them out. Is that what we want to do? To what extreme are we going to go?
"I don't know if there is a solution," she added. "I just know this isn't the one."
