Officials on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border searched for more victims Saturday after at least nine migrants died while trying to cross the rain-swollen Rio Grande, a dangerous border-crossing attempt in an area where the river’s water level had risen by more than 2 feet in a single day.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials discovered the victims near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday, following days of heavy rains. U.S. officials recovered six bodies, while Mexican teams recovered three, according to a CBP statement. It is one of the deadliest drownings on the U.S.-Mexico border in recent history.
The river, which was a little more than 90 centimeters deep at the start of the week, reached more than 1.5 meters on Thursday, and the water was flowing five times faster than usual, according to the National Weather Service.
The CBP said U.S. crews rescued 37 others from the river and detained 16 more, while Mexican officials took 39 migrants into custody.
CBP did not say what country or countries the migrants were from and did not provide any additional information on rescue and search operations. Local agencies in Texas that were involved have not responded to requests for information.
The Border Patrol's Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is fast becoming the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Agents stopped migrants nearly 50,000 times in the sector in July, with Rio Grande Valley a distant second at about 35,000. Eagle Pass is about 225 kilometers southwest of San Antonio.
The area draws migrants from dozens of countries, many of them families with young children. About six of 10 stops in the Del Rio sector in July were migrants from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua.
The sector, which extends 395 kilometers along the Río Grande, has been especially dangerous because river currents can be deceptively fast and change quickly. Crossing the river can be challenging even for strong swimmers.
In a news release last month, CBP said it had discovered bodies of more than 200 dead migrants in the sector from October through July.
This year is on track to break last year's record for the most deaths on the U.S.-Mexico border since 2014, when the U.N. International Organization for Migration began keeping track. The organization has tallied more than 4,000 deaths on the border since 2014, based on news reports and other sources, including 728 last year and 412 during the first seven months of this year, often from dehydration or drowning. June was the fourth-deadliest month on record, with 138 fatalities.
The Border Patrol has not released official tallies since 2020.
