26 Migrants Found Dead in One Texas County this Year

Texas sheriff’s deputies in a county located 80 miles north of the border with Mexico recovered the bodies or remains of at least 26 migrants so far this year. The migrants mostly died while crossing through ranches to circumvent a U.S. Border Patrol immigration checkpoint.

Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez told Breitbart Texas his deputies of 26 migrants between January 1 and July 1. Most of the recoveries involved the collection of skeletal remains scattered by animals and scavenger birds.

“Most of the time, that is all that is left,” Sheriff Martinez told Breitbart Texas. “It doesn’t take long with the animals and the heat for a human body to decay.”

Martinez said he is grateful the death rate is lower this year.  In July 2022, Breitbart Texas reported Martinez’s deputies had recovered the bodies or remains of 55 migrants.

The circumstances surrounding body recoveries fall into several categories. Some die shortly before or just after law enforcement officials respond to emergency calls for help from the migrants or their families, the Texas sheriff said at the time. Others are either found days later by ranchers or Border Patrol agents or when they are reported by other migrants who are apprehended at a later time. Finally, he said, “Some have been consumed by animals and the elements and only bones remain to tell their stories.”

Martinez blamed the callous human smugglers for the deaths of the migrants. “These smugglers have no regard for the value of human life,” he explained. “Many migrants are not prepared for the strenuous conditions they face when trying to hike in this terrain. The soft sand on the ranches makes one mile feel like three.”

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When a migrant becomes weakened or injured, “the smugglers simply leave them behind to die,” the sheriff said. “Then, ranchers, Border Patrol agents, and our deputies must face what remains. It isn’t pretty.”

During FY2022, Border Patrol agents recovered the bodies or remains of at least 880 migrants who died while or shortly after crossing the Mexican border into the United States, Breitbart Texas reported. The 880 deaths reported in FY22 shattered the record that was established just one year earlier when Border Patrol reports revealed the recovered bodies or remains of 568 migrants.

So far this calendar year, the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Program reports 240 migrants as dead or missing along the U.S. southwest border. Those include the deaths of 15 children. The largest number of these reports list drowning as the cause of death.