At least 1.820 Mexican migrants have died in their attempt to illegally enter the United States since December 2006 and 706 of them have not been identified, according to Mexico's foreign ministry disclosed Friday in the local press.
"The strengthening of certain border crossings by the immigration authorities (United States) has made the people who traffic migrants make them go through these routes is inhospitable and often causing death," said the director of Protection Policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Euclid del Moral, the newspaper Reforma.
Most deaths occurred in Arizona (southwest), separated from Mexico by a barren desert where many undocumented migrants are hospitalized, and the main causes of death are dehydration, drowning, traffic accidents or hypothermia.
However, despite the ragic figures, compiled from data provided by U.S. authorities at the Mexican consulate, the number of deaths is decreasing, it went from 443 in 2005 to 325 last year, according to Foreign Ministry, which he attributed to curb the flow of migrants from Mexico.
Of the more than 1,800 deaths in the last five years, "there are a significant number of people who are not recognized, that their remains are in the offices of medical examiners" Americans, said Del Moral.
"Sometimes they are simply some bones," lamented the official, who explained that in some cases can not even determine the sex of the dead.
Thousands of Mexicans cross illegally each year to the U.S. for some time in the little over three thousand miles of common land border, where also spend tens of thousands of citizens of other countries, mainly American, after crossing Mexico.
