Karen Gleason
The 830
Second in a series
Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio Sector have rescued thousands of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. Mexico border in the past two years, and the sector’s chief patrol agent is urging migrants not to risk the dangerous journey.
Acting Chief Patrol Agent Juan Bernal spoke to the 830 Times
the dangerous and often deadly illegal crossing into the United States. Bernal said Border
Patrol agents in the Del Rio Sector have rescued more than 1,000 migrants in trouble
during the current fiscal year. (Contributed photo by Del Rio Border Patrol Sector)
recently about the dangers migrants face to enter the country illegally.
“I’d like to talk about are the dangers associated with crossing the border. This is nothing new. Year after year, the dangers are very similar. What is new is the last couple of years have been unprecedented in the number of deaths associated with crossings (because of the volume of persons crossing the border),” Bernal said.
“Everything is compounding, so you have larger volume of traffic entering illegally between the ports of entry in the Del Rio Sector AOR (area of responsibility) and all of the corresponding tragedies that go with that: deaths, rapes, exploitation, harsh treatment in general, are obviously going to increase as well,” he added.
Bernal said in Fiscal Year 2022, Border Patrol agents recovered the bodies of 256 migrants, and he said that number doesn’t include the bodies recovered by state and local officials, the number recovered by officials in Mexico and the bodies still undiscovered in the wild, unpopulated areas of the 47-county Del Rio Sector.
Bernal said he wants everyone to realize the deaths also affect more than the migrant who lost his or her life.
“The tragedies that are tied into each death are widespread. You aren’t only impacting the migrant who lost his or her life. You’re impacting their family members, their loved ones, the people that care about them. You’re impacting the taxpayer, the individuals that have to pay for the shipping of the body, the burial, if it ends up being a Jane Doe or a John Doe,” Bernal said.
“You’re impacting people that didn’t even know that migrant: Border Patrol agents, county officials, city officials, that have to deal with the trauma of the death itself,” he added.
Bernal said the Border Patrol has a program called the Missing Migrant Program, created to reunite the bodies of deceased migrants with family members in their countries of origin.
“We try to identify who these Jane Does, these John Does, are and try to give the family members some closure. A lot of times, were it not for our program, they wouldn’t have that closure. They would just know that their loved one is missing, and they wouldn’t know what happened, as they may have lost touch with them for the last week or two.
They knew they were on their way to enter the U.S., but they don’t know which route they took, so they have no idea what happened.
“The extremes that my agents have to go to sometimes to make that happen are pretty harsh, and I don’t want to get into too many details, but just to give you a little bit of an idea, one example, on our water deaths, sometimes the level of decomposition is so bad that the agents have to come in, take the skin off a finger (of the deceased), put it on their own finger and then run the fingerprint,” Bernal said.
“The general public doesn’t realize the extremes that our agents go through to try to help reunite the dead individual with their loved ones,” the chief patrol agent added.
Bernal said the Missing Migrant Program is a nationwide Border Patrol initiative with offices at most sectors throughout the country. Bernal said there is a Missing Migrant Program office at the Del Rio Sector, which dovetails with the agency’s foreign operations program.
Locally, the Border Patrol works closely with the Mexican and Guatemalan consulates.
Bernal noted in Fiscal Year 2022, migrants of 118 different nationalities were encountered in the Del Rio Sector. So far this year, he said, agents have encountered migrants from 95 different nationalities.
Bernal said Del Rio Sector agents are still busy, but “not as busy as we were in FY 22,” when an all-time high number of migrants was recorded in the sector.
“We needed a little bit of a break. We needed a bigger break, but we’ll take whatever we can get and we’ll take that little bit. We’re still very busy, and what I like to say, is that we’re pound-for-pound, probably the busiest sector in the nation. What I mean by that is that other sectors in the nation are busy. Tucson is busy. El Paso is busy. Rio Grande Valley is busy, and none of them really have the resources they need to deal with the volume of traffic that they’re encountering.
“However, on any given day, we’re either just as busy as they are or more so. We’re always right there. We’re always competing for one, two or three in the nation, on any given day, and we only have about 1,500 to 1,600 agents on staff here in the Del Rio Sector. Tucson has over 4,000 agents. RGV has over 3,000. We’re doing a lot more with less; that’s where the pound-for-pound analogy comes in,” Bernal said.
“We do a really good job. The agents, the men and women in the field, the support staff, all of the support staff, the Border Patrol processing coordinators, everybody comes together like a family, like a true family, a true team, they knock it out of the park every day. They do a great job. If it weren’t for that, we would be in a lot of trouble, but we do a good job. The Del Rio Sector personnel do a great job,” he said.
Bernal said Border Patrol leaders try to give all of the agents the tools they need to be successful.
“We take extra measures to make sure that our agents are prepared and equipped and have the resources they need to be successful. However, there are variables that we cannot plan for: someone didn’t sleep well or if they didn’t hydrate properly or if they’re going through some type of illness and that’s going to impact their overall health and the stamina they may think they have.
“So agents find themselves in need on a regular basis as well. We have what we call the Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue Team (BORSTAR). Not only are they tactical medics, to go into a tactical environment and assist BORTAC and our agents in the field, but they are also a search and rescue team, designed and specializing in going out and finding missing migrants who have dialed 9-1-1 and who need help,” Bernal said.
BORSTAR and regular line agents are more and more often being called to rescue migrants who have gotten into trouble in the field.
“The county call centers have gotten really good at determining that nexus, when they receive a call from someone who’s in need or lost. At that point (the migrants have) usually been abandoned by the smuggler. The one person who may know where they’re at has left them, so now the group is out there, and they have no idea where they’re at, so all they know is to dial 9-1-1.
“They dial 9-1-1 and give some general idea. If we’re lucky, they have the GPS setting on, and we’re able to get a coordinate and get close to where they’re at and find them that way. If not, it becomes a little bit longer of a search.
“We have agents who have been specially trained to go out and do that, and again, the need created that. If we did not have the number of migrants being lost out there, then we may not have a need for that,” Bernal said.
Since the start of the Border Patrol’s Fiscal Year 2023 on Oct. 1, 2022, Bernal said, Border Patrol agents have rescued more than 1,000 migrants in trouble.
“In Fiscal Year 2023 alone, we’re already up to 1,059 rescues, resulting from 9-1-1 calls, so it could be one individual or multiple individuals that dialed 9-1-1 and we went out, tracked them down and located them and rescued them,” Bernal said.
He said he has no doubt that the number of migrant deaths would be much higher if the agents were not performing so many rescues.
“Were it not for the efforts of our agents, that 256 (deaths in FY 2022) and the 110 deaths so far this year would be significantly higher. In Fiscal Year 2022, we had 2,696 rescues,” the chief patrol agent said.
