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Responding to Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border Lessons from the Field

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Responding to Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border Lessons from the Field Responding to Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border Lessons from the Field August 2016 Responding to Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border Lessons from the Field August 2016 This publication was supported by the Ford Foundation. The points of view expressed herein are the authors’ and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Ford Foundation or individual Police Executive Research Forum members. Miller, Elizabeth. Washington, D.C. 20036 Copyright © 2016 by Police Executive Research Forum All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-934485-34-7 Cover and text page design by Dave Williams Cover photo credits: Elizabeth Miller Meeting photo credits: Adam Kemerer Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................................4 Introduction ..............................................................................................................5 By Chuck Wexler, Executive Director of the Police Executive Research Forum SECTION I: Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border ........................................6 The “Southwest Border Strategy” ................................................................................................................6 The Border Safety Initiative ....................................................................................................................................9 The Border Communities Impacted by Migrant Deaths .............................................................................9 The Stakeholders: Roles and Responsibilities ........................................................................................... 12 Law Enforcement Agencies ..................................................................................................................................12 Nonprofits and Other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) ...................................................................15 Scientists in Government and Academia ............................................................................................................20 International Government Representatives ........................................................................................................22 SECTION II: The PERF Roundtable Discussion on Responding to Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border ..............................23 Interdisciplinary and Interagency Partnerships ......................................................................................... 23 The Forensic Border Coalition .............................................................................................................................25 The Missing Migrant Initiative – Tucson Sector .................................................................................................26 Brooks County, TX: A Network of Interconnected Partnerships .........................................................................28 The Way Forward: Next Steps and New Opportunities for Collaboration ................................................ 29 Data Sharing .........................................................................................................................................................30 DNA ......................................................................................................................................................................30 Building Trust with Migrant Communities ..........................................................................................................32 SECTION III: Critical Lessons for Building Interagency Partnerships to Prevent and Respond to Migrant Deaths and Next Steps ................................34 Lessons ....................................................................................................................................................... 34 Next Steps ................................................................................................................................................... 36 Conclusion: A Call from Practitioners for Long-Term Solutions ...........................37 Roundtable Discussion: Responding to Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border: Washington, D.C. June 1, 2016 .................................................................. 38 Acknowledgments would like to thank the Ford Foundation for supporting I this examination of the migrant deaths crisis and strategies for addressing it. I am thankful to Senior Program Officer Mayra Peters-Quintero for recognizing the importance of this issue and for her support and encouragement throughout the project. Mayra and the Ford Foun- dation deserve a great deal of credit for shining a light on this critical issue. I would also like to thank everyone who contributed to our research and to the stakeholder round- table discussion that we held in Washington, D.C. on June 1, 2016. Your insights were invaluable to this project and your collaborative efforts are a model for the country. I would also like to offer special thanks to those who hosted us during our site visits. You were incredibly generous with your time and your expertise and helped us to identify the critical issues that need to be addressed. Finally, I would like to thank the project team. Jessica Toliver, PERF’s Director of Technical Assis- tance, Chief Charlie Deane of the Prince William County Police Department, and Research Associate Elizabeth Miller showed leadership and skill in bringing together a diverse range of practitioners and experts and identifying key principles for addressing the migrant deaths crisis. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction By Chuck Wexler he United States is grappling with a migration crisis. Since the late 1990s, migrants from Mexico and Central America have been dying by the thousands as they cross into the United States Tthrough the unforgiving deserts and scrubland of the Southwest United States. Agencies along the U.S.-Mexico border have been stretched thin as they have tried to save migrants in distress and, when those efforts fail, identify the deceased and return their remains to their loved ones. In 2013, with support from the Ford Foundation, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) began to explore the issue of migrant deaths along the Southwestern border and identify strategies to reduce these fatalities. PERF staff members travelled to Mexico City and South Texas to meet with practitioners and conducted in-depth interviews of experts and stakeholders from nonprofit organizations, local and federal law enforcement agencies, medical examiners’ offices, and universities. After gathering input from these representatives, PERF held an unprecedented, multi-state, multi-agency meeting in Wash- ington, D.C. on June 1, 2016 to discuss interdisciplinary partnership-building and strategies to reduce migrant deaths and improve processes for identifying and repatriating migrants’ remains. This report is the result of PERF’s efforts. It highlights the factors that contribute to the migrant deaths crisis; identifies the key stakeholders in the field and the resources that they represent; examines the partnership-building efforts that are already in place along the border to increase successful rescues of migrants in distress and improve identifications of those who perish; and presents new opportunities for collaboration and information-sharing moving forward. This report serves as a chronicle of the efforts of practitioners in the field, highlights the crisis of migrant deaths in the Southwest, and proposes short-term and long-term solutions for practitioners and policy-makers. It is important to recognize that the migrant deaths crisis is a large-scale humanitarian issue. More than 6,500 migrants have died along the U.S-Mexican border since 1998, and that number is almost certainly an underestimate of the scale of the tragedy. While this report provides guidance on how to reduce these deaths now, in the current legal environment, the real solution lies in comprehensive immi- gration reform legislation that will provide new pathways to legal immigration and reduce incentives for attempting dangerous illegal border crossings. INTRODUCTION 5 SECTION I: Migrant Deaths Along the Southwest Border etween 1998 and 2015, more than 6,500 migrants died along the U.S.-Mexico border.1 The highest number of fatalities in that period was in 2005, when 492 migrants lost their lives.2 The number Bof deaths per year has fluctuated since then, dropping to 240 in 2015. Death rates have remained stubbornly high during the last decade even as the number of migrants crossing the border has declined and the United States has experienced a net loss of Mexican immigrants.3, 4, 5 “The Southwest Border Strategy” Many place the blame for these migrant deaths squarely on immigration-control policies, saying that they have tightened restrictions on who is allowed to migrate into the United States legally while not addressing the push factors driving migrants from their home countries. Perhaps chief among these is the “Southwest Border Strategy,” implemented in 1994. It was meant to strengthen border security and close well-established migration corridors between Mexico and the United States. According to a 2006 report from the United States Government Accountability Office, the federal government intended to 1. U.S. Border Patrol webpage. “Southwest Border Deaths by Fiscal Year.” https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BP%20
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