Though border scholars have long engaged in rigorous documentation of violence and death experienced by undocumented migrant travelers attributed to US border security policies, we have primarily focused on making these harms manifest. That has especially been true of scholarship employing methods of counterforensic documentation—methods turning the state's monopoly on forensic investigation of crimes towards the investigation of the state..... READ MORE

U.S. boundary enforcement has long been organized around an effort to redirect unauthorized border crossing into remote and inhospitable expanses of desert terrain. Using southern Arizona’s West Desert corridor as a case study, this article explores how these two conditions have been actively cultivated over time. First, we describe the twentieth-century use of military and conservation rationales to remove indigenous O’odham, Mexican-American, and Anglo-American residents from their villages and ranchlands..... READ MORE

We found that migrant deaths rose from an annual mean of 133 during the Localized Funnel Effect (LFE) Era to 198 in the Title 42 (T42) Era, representing a 48 percent increase. Compared to the earlier era, remains recovered during the T42 Era clustered closer to the border and near the cities of Nogales and Agua Prieta, Sonora, having shifted from west to east in southern Arizona. Additionally, we found that Title 42 disproportionately affected Mexican and Guatemalan nationals... READ MORE

On May 26, 2015, the Parliament of Niger adopted Law No. 2015-36 on Illegal Trafficking of Migrants, which resulted in a repressive and security-based approach to migration management. The law was drafted under the auspices of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with financial support from Italy and Denmark. Migrant services providers (transporters, hosts, brokers, etc.) who had until then operated in broad daylight... READ MORE

Recent studies and reports suggest an increased mortality rate of undocumented border crossers (UBCs) in Arizona is the result of heat extremes and climatic change. Conversely, others have shown that deaths have occurred in cooler environments than in previous years. We hypothesized that human locomotion plays a greater role in heat-related mortality and that such events are not simply the result of exposure. To test our hypothesis... READ MORE

US public officials frequently argue that high temperatures are responsible for increasing mortality of undocumented border crossers (UBCs) in southern Arizona. In this article, we suggest that these kinds of assertions are not only empirically misleading, they also serve to naturalise UBC deaths in the region by helping to obscure their structural causes. Indeed, although heat exposure is a primary cause of death in the region... READ MORE

There has been a proliferation of geographic literature exploring the fatal effects of immigration policy since the early 2000s. Studies have used geographic information systems (GIS) and predictive modeling to explore potential relationships between border protection infrastructure, environment, and migrant death. Although some studies have used GIS to determine the probable effects of heat stress...READ MORE

In public statements and archival documents U.S. officials have repeatedly made explicit their intention that the deployment of tactical infrastructure along the Mexico/United States border will contribute to the “funneling” of unauthorized migration toward increasingly remote and difficult routes of travel. By amplifying the suffering, risk and uncertainty to which migrants are exposed, it is intended that others in the future will be... READ MORE

Theories of migration deterrence have long posited that border enforcement infrastructure pushes migration routes into more rugged and deadly terrain, driving an increase in migrant mortality. Applying geospatial analysis of landscape and human variables in one highly-trafficked corridor of the Arizona / Sonora border, we test whether the expansion of surveillance infrastructure has in fact shifted migrants’ routes toward areas that are... READ MORE

Confinement, hindrance, and time bring anxiety, fear, and stress, often accompanied by confusion and desperation. In the case of undocumented immigrants in the Sonoran Desert, such conditions are manipulated by way of surveillance and policing. These conditions, in combination with physical exertion, augment a physiological stress response that coalesces with existing traumas and fear. We undertake a critical mapping of... READ MORE

Although heat exposure is the leading cause of mortality for undocumented immigrants attempting to traverse the Mexico-U.S. border, there has been little work in quantifying risk. Therefore, our study aims to develop a methodology projecting increase in core temperature over time and space for migrants in Southern Arizona using spatial analysis and remote sensing in combination with the heat balance equation... READ MORE

This article conducts geographic information system (GIS) modeling of unauthorized migration routes in the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona and finds an increase in the ruggedness of terrain crossed by pedestrian travelers throughout time. The modeling of ruggedness incorporates multiple variables that include slope, vegetation, “jaggedness,” and ground temperature, and provides an alternative to... READ MORE

Thousands of undocumented border crossers have died while attempting to cross the US-México border since the 1990s. Prior studies have found that these deaths are a consequence of increased border enforcement efforts as well as of economic, political, and social conditions in immigrant-sending countries and in the United States. The present study contributes to this expanding body of literature. Drawing on data from... READ MORE