In Arizona, Border Patrol doesn't include dozens of deaths in tally of migrants who perish

[WhiteTara]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-border-patrol-count-20161128-story.html

In December 2015, the U.S. government reported that the number of migrant deaths along the border with Mexico fell for the third straight fiscal year, dropping from 308 in 2014 to 240 in 2015.

Officials attributed the decline to better surveillance of the desert and an improved ability to apprehend migrants stranded there. But some immigrant advocates questioned the meaning of the numbers, suggesting that they presented an incomplete and misleading picture.

Now data from Arizona suggest that the advocates may have been right.

Between 2004 and 2013, the number of deaths in Arizona reported each year by the U.S. Border Patrol was roughly on par with — or greater than — the number recorded by the medical examiner’s office in Pima County, which collects the totals for all four counties along the state’s southern border.

In 2014, however, the state and federal figures began to diverge, with the state reporting 127 deaths and federal officials 110. The spread was far greater last year, with the state reporting 143 deaths and federal officials 68.

That difference alone — 75 deaths — is more than enough to cancel out the borderwide improvement reported by federal officials between 2014 and 2015.

[ZoomBubba]

1. The border patrol is weird ...

... it's become an world unto itself. I don't know if its become dominated by white nationalists (who joined during its recruitment expansion) or what, but it seems that the members have done their damnedest to get Trump in.