New law designed to make southern border safer
On Dec. 31, 2020, the U.S. government passed a law with bipartisan support that offers practical safety measures to reduce the dangers immigrants face when crossing the border through the Arizona desert.
Imagine risking your life in a desert for the dream of living safely in the United States. After hours of wandering in the desert under intense temperatures, you dehydrate or suffer an injury. You are alone. If you have a phone, it is out of service; you cannot contact someone for assistance, water or emergency medical services.
It is likely that will you die in the desert. Due to limited local and federal government resources, a quick identification of your body cannot be carried out.
Each year, immigrants experience myriad maladies—whether dehydration, injury or death—crossing the U.S.-Mexico border through the Sonoran Desert. 2020 was the deadliest year on record for immigrants crossing the hot Arizona desert, with about 225 human remains found by authorities.
To provide resources needed to mitigate the deaths of immigrants who cross through the southern border and to identify those who have died in the desert, the U.S. government implemented the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act. Thanks to the advocacy of multiple border communities and with bipartisan support, the law was introduced in the Senate by Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. The new law includes :
Funding to identify and transport missing people and process unidentified human remains, including immigrants
Opportunity for family members to submit DNA samples to facilitate finding a missing person or identify human remains without worrying their biological information will be shared with federal or state law-enforcement agencies
Deployment of 170 self-powering, 9–1–1 cellular relay rescue beacons along the southern border
A requirement that U.S. Customs and Border Protection submit annual reports on the number of unidentified remains found, the use of the rescue beacons and how the agency collects data.
"This is remarkable, especially when you consider this was the result of bipartisan support," said Elket Rodríguez, immigrant and refugee advocacy and missions specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Fellowship Southwest. “There were not many legislative efforts in the last four years to assist immigrants or help our border communities.”
Fellowship Southwest, which is part of CBF's Advocacy and Action Team for Immigrants and Refugees, joined hundreds of other organizations to sponsor a letter spearheaded by the Southern Border Communities Coalition to advocate for this law, Rodríguez reported.
"This law gives us hope that in the midst of all the political and social turmoil in which we live, there still is room for respect, sensitivity, reasonableness, moderation and common sense despite increased partisanship," he said. "Hopefully, the lives of many migrants will be saved, and many families whose loved ones have perished in the desert will be comforted."