IMMIGRATION: Advocates seek solutions to migrant deaths in Arizona

About 200 people die crossing the desert in the heat every year, many are never identified. People put water out for them, and groups are looking for more ways to help them.     - - Donna Poisl

 By EDWARD SIFUENTES

TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz. ---- In late April, a Vista father of five children died in the Arizona desert trying to re-enter the country illegally and became one of the nearly 200 people who die each year in that stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Authorities recovered the remains of 191 people along the Arizona border with Mexico in fiscal year 2010-11, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. Nearly half of the deaths occur in the Tohono O'odham Nation, an Indian reservation about the size of Connecticut that shares 76 miles of desolate, desert border with Mexico.

Human rights groups in Arizona have been trying to stem the number of deaths by placing water along the desert trails and providing food and medical assistance to the migrants. But the advocates say federal immigration authorities and the Tohono O'odham tribal government should do more to help prevent the deaths.
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