HUFFINGTON POST: …U.S. Customs and Border Protection has more than doubled the size of the Border Patrol since 2004,” Kerry Rogers, a spokeswoman for the Border Patrol, said in an e-mail to The Huffington Post. “Taken as a whole, the additional manpower, technology and resources provided in the last six years represent the most serious and sustained action to secure our border in our nation’s history. And it is clear from every key measure that this approach is working.”
Increased border monitoring and the historic number of undocumented immigrants deported from the United States has caused migrants to take riskier routes across the border, said Garcia, of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos. Some are desperate to return.
“The more we have militarized the border,” Garcia said, “the more walls we put, [the] more technology, [the] more agents we put, people who find that they’ve got to cross — whether because they’re starving and, more and more right now, because they’ve got to come back and reunite with their families — they’re going further and further out into the more dangerous areas. That’s why we continue to see, at least ratio wise, an increase in the deaths.” … (more)
