ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.30.2009
The searing summer heat in Arizona's desert is taking its toll on illegal border crossers — the same as it has done every year since the start of the decade.
Officials have recovered the bodies of six illegal border crossers since Monday along Arizona's stretch of U.S.-Mexico border, bringing the fiscal-year-to-date total to 164, figures from the Pima and Cochise County medical examiner's records show.
These two medical examiners handle all bodies of suspected illegal immigrants recovered on the border from New Mexico to Yuma County.
With temperatures reaching 107 degrees on Monday and Tuesday in Southern Arizona, it's not surprising that more bodies have turned up. Most of the illegal border crossers found dead in Arizona die from hyperthermia or dehydration. And July is historically the worst month for body recoveries.
The 2009 fiscal-year-to-date total is on pace to match previous-year totals, which have exceeded at least 180 every year since 2004 and at least 130 every year since 2002.
Three of the six bodies this week were discovered on the Tohono O'odham Nation, and two were on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The sixth was found near Naco in Cochise County.
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