Searching for the living, the dead, and the new disappeared on the migrant trail in Texas: preliminary report on migrants deaths in South Texas

This preliminary report provides an initial overview of the current crisis in South Texas. It aims to call attention to this crisis and to call on authorities at the local, state, and federal level to take action to prevent these deaths. It points to the lack of standardized criteria in both the processing of human remains and procedures to count migrants who die crossing the border – counts that are essential for understanding the outcomes of U.S. immigration policies. The report presents a synopsis of trends in migrant deaths in South Texas and some of the causes for these deaths. At its close, it presents a series of recommendations to address the current humanitarian crisis. This report, one of the first to focus on deaths in Texas, follows a series of important studies that document and analyze border deaths and their links to enforcement policies.