Heat, cartel lies make border town a death trap for migrants

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (Border Report) – Their town just north of a 30-foot-tall steel bollards barrier separating the United States and Mexico, Sunland Park residents have learned to live with migrants running through their neighborhoods and hiding from authorities.

“I live very near to the border. It’s very often that we see people that cross through Sunland Park. Sometimes they are in our houses, waiting for the coyotes (smugglers) to pick them up,” said resident and community activist Isabel Santos.

What is hard to stomach is watching their town’s fire trucks rush into the desert to retrieve bodies. The victims are people whose American dream died after a fall from the barrier or nearby Mount Cristo Rey, or who got lost without water on sand so hot it blisters your feet through the rubber soles of tennis shoes.

“It’s a humanitarian issue. It’s bad for people to die, more so from heat. We care that people die because we are all immigrants. Even the United States is made of immigrants,” Juan Garcia, a long-time resident, said outside the Sunland Park Senior Center. “This is an ongoing problem. We hope the government finds a solution.”

Since March, Sunland Park firefighters have assisted the U.S. Border Patrol in the recovery of 13 bodies. Most were found in the desert west of the city, others in the Rio Grande. A deeper dive by the Arizona-based nonprofit No More Deaths found that stretch of desert being one of the deadliest for migrants crossing the border between 2012 and 2023.

In a city of 16,000 inhabitants where reports of missing persons are rare and dozens of footprints lead away from the border wall on any given day, it’s a safe bet the victims were migrants, local officials said.

“All fire departments deal with accidents, fires, medical emergencies. But what we’re dealing here in Sunland Park with this migrant surge is we’re encountering migrants with heat exhaustion, heat stress or (doing) body recoveries,” said Sunland Park Fire Battalion Chief Ramiro Rios. “I would say we are the only fire department dealing with this because we are so close to Mexico and the desert. So, we’re dealing with something very unique.”

The city is also dealing with the ruthless drug cartels across the border in Juarez, Mexico, that have taken over migrant trafficking in recent years. Federal officials have linked migrant stash houses in New Mexico to La Empresa, a Juarez-based gang known to operate in Anapra, a vast Juarez neighborhood across the border from Sunland Park.

Diaz and Sunland Park Fire Chief Daniel Medrano say most body recoveries and migrant rescues take place between 3 and 7 p.m. That’s because the cartels allegedly tell the migrants U.S. border agents don’t like to be out on patrol when it’s very hot outside. The Border Patrol has refuted those claims.

Medrano says the migrants succumb to the heat easier than most because of conditions they’ve been subjected to prior to being pushed – sometimes literally – over the border wall.

“We understand that in the southern part of the border they’re held in stash houses where they are not fed well, they don’t have good hydration,” Medrano said. “They are basically told, ‘Get up, it’s time to move.’ So, especially during this heat we’re having this year, you need to be well-hydrated, well-nourished to make any kind of trip (outdoors). And we don’t even recommend that for a healthy person.”

Once over the wall, the migrants revert to cartel instructions of avoiding contact with authorities. They will stay away from homes, roads and even the geo-location rescue beacons the Border Patrol has scattered in the desert.

“Once they cross that border wall, it’s desert – literally desert. Even though they’re close to ‘civilization’ – houses, businesses and whatever – it’s very easy to get lost. And that’s what we’re finding,” Medrano said.

On Wednesday, Sunland Park Fire recovered the body of a woman from the Rio Grande and rescued a male from the desert near a landfill. Border Patrol and Sunland Park firefighters provided an IV and a “cooling blanket” to the male until his body temperature was under 102 degrees. Once body temperatures reach 104, vital organs suffer damage, Rios said.

A Mexican army patrol on Wednesday called over Sunland Park firefighters to the wall. They shared intelligence that a group of 35 had just crossed or was about to cross, and to be on the lookout.

The Border Patrol did find a small group of younger-looking migrants. But that was near where the male was found about an hour earlier.

Like the residents, the Sunland Park Fire Department has learned to adapt to migrant traffic.

“It’s not necessarily unmanageable. A week and a half ago we had one patient at 1 p.m. and then five patients in a span of six to eight minutes at 4 p.m. in various areas. They weren’t all together, and that is very taxing on our guys,” Rios said. “One single call is manageable. The problem is, the majority of times we’ll have calls stacked two, three, four at a time. The incident commander has to decide what units he can break off to go to the other calls or have other fire departments assist.”

Sunland Park, with its 25 able-bodied firefighters and staff members, has mutual assistance agreements with the Doña Ana County Fire Department and with the much-larger but also much-busier El Paso (Texas) Fire Department.

Santos, the community activist, said Sunland Park needs more local and outside resources to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

“Here in Sunland Park, I’m involved in the community and they tell me they want to help the people because they feel very bad that somebody attacked another person or that people died near McNutt Road. I hope somebody helps these people because they are our people, too,” she said.