Alsome Media.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
It's me James today and I'm very lucky to be joined by Bryce from No More Deaths And what we're going to talk about today is this really excellent piece of data visualization and research that depicts a very sad topic, which is the deaths of migrant centering the United States. And Bryce, I know he's done a lot of work on this, so welcome to the show. Bryce, Thank you, Yeah,
you're welcome. I guess maybe we can start off. I'm looking at this data visualization on a map right now, and we'll have links in the show notes for other people who want to look at it. Can you explain what this data set is?
Yeah, So we collected through a bunch of different sources, medical examiners, Justices of the Peace, SHERIFFISAL partner, CBPS owned data, just a bunch of data on individual micro along the US Mexican border.
And so this is different data through each.
Source, but generally we tried to get a lot of demographic data, location data, positive death, and at least some form of the instigram laertive to kind of get a little bit of the context of.
How each of these people guide.
Yeah, if people are looking at the map, they can see various colored dots, right, and they can click on that dot and that will give them the fiscal year the border trail sector. In some cases you'll see like the type of death, maybe a gender and age, things like that. Looking at it, like it's one of those things that maybe is more emotionally difficult to view if you're more familiar, Like I can look at these dots
and I can think of places I've been. I can even think of that the day I was there, and it's quite know, it's impactful to see that all these people have died in places I know. So well, perhaps we can explain, like the scale of this is huge, right, do you know how many exactly how many data points there are on here?
I think there's something like solve a thirteen thousand.
Yeah, it's fast, which overall is like not a great sort of like indicator of how many people have actually died or even know how many people could be reported to have died, just because the Texas Day it all is so walky.
Yeah, let's get into that.
Then let's talk about maybe the sources for this data, and then maybe perhaps how your estimates are much high, even with some of the emissions. Like the data that you have tends to show under reporting, So like can you explain first like where does this data come from and how did you get it? You were saying the Texas numbers are lower, but can you explain how like there are these multiple jurisdictions and how you can't just like ask someone for this information.
Yeah, there's a new people we're able to disask for it. Well, generally it all comes from formal public records requests from medical examiners. When we're lucky because medical examiners US we have really good easily shaped double data.
So so we did for San Diego County, Yeah, that're very good.
Pima County, the state of New Mexico, Al Passo, other places have a corner that are associated with for sheriff department, and that's usually a little dice year they're a little more reluctant to give up records. The Imperial County, for Yuma County and then Texas it's just like a medical legal nightmare. So there's if smaller counties don't have medical examiners, they just had justice into the peace culture.
Part of like the courts and.
They'll go out and investigate deaths and if an autopsy is needed, they'll send it off to another county to get an autopsy. There's a huge amount of counties in Texas like this. So that data all came from this researcher, Stephanie Luster from the University of Texas Austin, who is working on a different project, but was gracious enough to
share everything that she had collected. But that was like just a huge amount of work physically going to each of these counties, looking at paper records from justices of the peace, writing down all that data. There's some that comes from like sheriff's department, some that comes from.
Various other sources. So the Texas data and some of it.
For example, Wegg County Medical Examiner, they don't give up their data to anybody, and there's a lot of issues with them potentially, like not having actually performed autopsy on a lot of autopsies on a lot of migrants, and there's some potential bookcases about that going on.
But yeah, so.
Texas is really messing and a lot of it you'll notice, like Texas has a lot of.
The purple dots.
Yeah, the purple dots are their location data from Border patrols database and so that ends in twenty eighteen. So we have data possible needs border patrol over not location data. Yeah, and so a lot of Texas on that being this just the border patrol data unless we have loved specific access to that places Justice of the Peace data. It's so the Texas data is pretty limited for about reason.
Yeah, you can see a sort of very few red dots, which which are your your other data sources like in Texas aside from it. So maybe Brooks County you're able to get Justice to the Peace data there because yeah, the density is profound.
Yeah, it's just the So it's the Brooks County Chasta Department that actually puts together that data, and they're really keen on the whole thing. Okay, And partially it's because the data exists, but partially it really wills just to reach fluster death in that area because of a checkpoint south of there where people will get dropped off south of the checkpoint pipe around and it's just like massive, massive open grade yard in Brooks County.
Jeez.
Yeah, I don't think I spent much time in that part of Texas, but certainly like some of these other ones that I'm much more familiar with. Let's talk about the CBP data, right, you mentioned it there. One of the things you found was that CBP has a systemic issue with undercounting deaths, right yeah, So where does that come from?
So I've heard from I guess for years Humane Borders and Pema County Medical Examiner has been documenting this since at least twenty fourteen. The major undercount on border patrols data. But something I've here a lot is just that it's cases where border thetow wasn't personally involved in the search and that they had like changed their coounting system to only be counting cases where they were involved. And I think that may account for some of it.
But in order.
To compare these deaths, border patrols data is just really gnarly and messy, and that there's typos, there's misspelling. States are wrong, ages are wrong, genders are wrong. So you really, in order to compare them, you really have to go person by person.
Go down the list, find the death and in.
Order patrol database, look at Medical Examiner data on find of them person by person. So because we have so much of the incident narratives from the medical examiners, we can actually tell when Border patrol was involved, and so we mark when border patrols involved when they're not involved, and then when that case doesn't actually get counted by Border patrol.
Okay, and it.
Doesn't actually really line up. There's not a huge correlation there. I mean there is some correlation, like older skeletal remains things like that often won't get counted, but generally there are a lot of cases where they directly involved where even they were the first responders on the scene to a distress call or any number of things, where that person won't end up in Vorda patrols database. And then other cases where it seems like they had no involvement, that person ends.
Up being in Vortical Patrol's database.
So they've been in trouble with the GAO multiple times for under counting or in prop of the accounting or recording these debts, and so they have access to medical examiner data. Medical examiners send them the data, they just don't use it. We often also noticed that, uh, the causes of death really don't match up in a lot of like really specific cases like yeah, for Walfalls, for instance,
was the most notable one. There'll be a huge amount of cases that medical examiner will say one force trauma, and then Border Patrols data will say medical examiner and detainment or exposure or any number of other things, which like for the most part, causes the death seem to
line up. So the fact that these Waalfall deaths it happens to not line up is like, you know, I don't want to assume they have bad intent, although obviously Bordemtrol is bad intent, but it seems like it happens regularly enough that it's hard to feel like it's not as somewhat intentional that the cases that they're kind of choosing to change the causes of death.
For right, So let get obfuscates the lethality of the border war, right length, it's the amount of people who it kills.
Yeah, I mean to a huge degree too.
I mean the fact that Bordertrol's data is kind of our only source of data for MCAN deaths and then specifically for deaths caused by border patrol or like Walfall deaths, means that the amount of death that we need the public has access to, like Walhall death, for instance, is just a drop in the bucket.
Compared to what's actually happening.
So all of the research and reporting and all the stuff that happens around at these CC related deaths is drawing off just like truly false numbers.
Yeah, yeah, and that leads to people growing bad conclusions, right right. The other thing that you found is that like that there seems to be an underreporting of in custody deaths, right, or an undercounting of people who die in custody. So can you explain how you're able to ascertain that different between the in custody death recorded by the Office of Professional Responsibility.
That's just the ones that you found, right, right.
So the opposite Professional Responsibility is part of CBP, and they're supposed to be recording all the saw CBP related deaths, including according to the Deats and Custody Reporting Act to like twenty thirteen or whatever it was, army destin plustody. There's a really specific definition of what in custody means, and so we tried to follow pretty strictly what that definition was to kind of make our own assessments using the incident narratives.
Yeah, I'm curious what does it mean, Like I'm thinking about door intention, right, Like does that count as in custody?
Yeah?
So any only time if the person is in the process of being apprehended, if the person has been apprehended, if a person has been detained, as a person is physically in custody, bordertrol, in a bordertrol vehicle, in a CP facility, all those things would count. Is inculsody okay, which is important because and at least one of the cases, the border patrol agent involved said the person wasn't in custody, he was just detained, which for the purposes of reporting, there's actually no difference.
Right, Yeah, but you said that clearly to.
Not have it be labeled as in custody death right, and what it seems like that ended up not being able toserve in custody death So it's definitely I think they're they're aware the fact that these are being requoted and kind of tron not to have.
That due to case they have too many of them, like appear Another interesting data interesting is your own word, but another data point here was the amount of death caused by pursuit right or in pursuit I guess maybe you should just explain what pursuit is to people if they're not aware.
Yeah, so there's two kinds of pursuit. We listen at the same gear on the database. You can see the difference of there's chases on a motor vehicle and there's chases on foot. So for example, a person's getting chase through the desert and collapses and dies, they'll be considered a death your pursuit. Or if a person is like in al Paso or San Diego or Imperial County more is chased ends up falling in a canal or jumping
into a canal escape and drowns. The idea chase on foot and then motor vehicle pursuits are yeah, the person is being chased by Border patrol and the glosing passions.
And people are chilled. Yeah.
Use of force cases also include some of these chases through OPR standards and CVP standards. If spike strips are deployed, or if a vehicle is ran by a Border Patrol vehicle, that's considered use of force. So that's where a person died due to that, we would call that a use of force death. Yeah, So I guess those are the two to three different times and perceived that's a.
Great do and so like the yeah, those are as you say they're broken down the database, right, but in the spreadsheet they are combined. What is this data show us about? Like, I guess if we look at the last half decade or so, let's go back to like twenty sixteen, right, border police, Like, what does it show us about like title eight, Title forty two, we're like a little too close to the Biden asylum band to
have I guess, like good data on that yet. But do you see a clear pattern in like the border rhetoric and border quote unquote enforcement and the amount of death or the type of death?
Well, definitely, yeah, it's it's immediately clear. I mean, even Biden's asylum band, I think there's an immediate effect. I mean even just with as a normal death volunteer, we started seeing people crossing the border, crossing the desert that just never would have yet made the attempt previously, you know, and then started to see as people reported in death data too. So I think all of that is pretty clear.
So with Trump's restrictions on asylum, I think the biggest thing, honestly was all the metering policies rather than just Title forty two or like Protection Book protocols or any of that. It was just the fact that people weren't allowed to access the border country.
Yeah, ended up kind of like going.
Around to enter like other places in the desert border sort of pick them up. Then all this started happening, Yeah, And so it's kind of like a trickle in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, a little bit more in twenty twenty one, and then twenty twenty two you suddenly see just huge amounts of people from countries other than Mexico and Central
America starting to show up in the data. And then also like people who clearly were trying to seek asylum showing up in this death data all the way up until it slowed down after you know, the end of three twenty three, and then but definitely continue.
Through through for Yeah, definitely, like I speaking from my own experience on the border here, we saw the same thing, right, like people crossing you wouldn't have seen making that crossing in places at times that they wouldn't have crossed, you know, before the Biden asylum ban, and like that definitely resulted in I mean there was a weekend in September where I think five people died September twenty twenty four, but we had a heat wave and like it immediately resulted
in multiple fatalities that like wouldn't have been the case previously. I wonder, like what is this data set in terms of like recommendations, right in terms of like how we can use this data set? Obviously, we're at a time when I when I guess the Trump administration like had its complete asylum band stayed, but we're back at like people can't in good faith like turn up to a port of entry anymore and just be like, Hey, I'd like to claim asylum and really really hope for the best.
Like what does this data set tell us in terms of like what policies kill more people? And like I guess, like like what recommendations arise from the data in terms obviously, I guess bit of the recommendation is to have laws that allow people to fucking enter this country and claim
asylum without walking across a desert. But that seems like it's too much to ask, So like what do we learn in terms of like specific policies that are particularly fatal and like the ways that those that could be mitigated and if it's not already by like water drops and search.
Yeah, that's a hard question, just because talking to you know, the older people and the more death's been around since like kind of the early years of prevention to the terrence. Yeah, they thought about sort of feeling like you know, when they were first out there, being like, man, this is really unsustainable. We can't out here all the time like this. Maybe like a few more years we could probably handle and then hopefully this prevention to the terrence thing will
have like kind of stopped. They'll see like this is unsustainable, and then here we are all these years later and it's worse than it's et in. Yeah, And the original prevention to the terance policy is like this strategy of essentially killing people and the hopes, you know, people will stop trying to cross the border or something, and kind of just is the original thing that it's really hard
to get away from. Yeah, the fact that we're now applying the same strategy of death and suffering to asylum seekers is really horrifying.
So I think, yeah, Number one, open up courts.
Eventually to allow asylum secret to seek asylum, bring back like even the sort of minimum asylum projections that we had back then. Other things like how people are dying really matters. Yeah, So for example, in the Lapasto sector,
there was very very few deaths in twenty fourteen. The last couple of years it's been the deadliest single small area in the entire border, and a lot of that was just because the order has just become so militarized that even this like urban area where you know, people are dying a mile from town, people are dying in town. We I was part of the recovery where we this person was on a road, had been there for about three days dead. It was about forty feet from the
busiest the busiest road in the entire town. Yeah, and that's just not something that really fits in with the ordinary narrative like prevenual Tuiterians people getting pushed out to these more remote areas, and I think just a level of militarization is just up to the level that it
really is just deadly kind of. I mean even yeah, all these deaths in San Diego, as you know, also do so like all these Walfall deaths are pretty much all since like twenty seventeen or even more recently, so the construction of all this new border wall, you can point very directly to a huge amount of deaths.
Just caused by walfalls.
There's the canals in Imperial County and al Paso that there a huge amount of people. There's Alpaso right now is in the process of revamping their whole canal system.
Would be a great opportunity.
To add some sort of like safety systems in place so that people don't die. Yeah, there is all the pursue deaths which now are not just being caused the border patrol, but also like the Texas Department of Public Public Safety now that Operation Lone Star has helped up all these things where the kinds of death and the kinds of people dying and all that stuff has changed and increased really drastically in the last few years.
And you can kind of point to a lot of them.
But also it's like, yeah, I don't know, it's hard to really have any smart thoughts on it. Besides, just like bore control is underformable and just needs to be disbanded.
Entire Yeah, and like this whole border regime, right, the whole idea of like an iron border that we enforce in a physical space. The point of it is to kill people, Like the point of it is to hurt people by having perfectly innocent people who you'd be happy to have with your neighbor die in the desert.
Like that's that is, that is the policy goal.
Like I'm just looking at like I'm looking at Pinto Canyon, which San Diego people will know. It's like it's pretty Like don't if you're listening to this, don't go to Pinto Canyon.
You might die.
It's not a place to just go looking around if you're not experienced traveling out in the desert. But like even Pinter Canyon is Nali, But looking along the wall, the wall kills way more people than this rugged and difficult piece of terrain in the middle of nowhere. Like it's it's things that we have paid a lot of money for that kill the most people. And that's pretty
brutal to confront. One of the other things that you guys were able to determine was that like a number of United States residents had died right in this data sect.
Yeah, can you explain that for people totally?
So?
Yeah, Like you said, there's people you'd love to have as your neighbor dying in all these places, and not just that, but your actual neighbor. The amount of people whose main residence listed was just in San Diego County, in Oceanside, in Bakersfield and Indianapolis, places that we've all
been to. We were able to record for San Diego County and a few other counties a lot of where people actually lived in some of the circumstances for why they were crossing through the desert in the first place. A lot of it is people who are very recently deported, or who just traveled to Mexico because they had to get some paperwork done or wanted to visit family or things like this. Just had entire lives in the United States and then and then passed away on the way back ends of the country.
Yeah, including them.
I mean, it's really heartbreaking to you can see, there's there's a lot of cases where the person who actually finds the body or recovers the body is not there some family members or their spouse or their children, even which only happens because you know, bord of Trol is generally not that interested in recovering bodies or in looking for people who are lost. So often often it'll be somebody's spouse who comes. I mean, when it's actually the first person on the stea.
Yeah, it's it's very common right for volunteers to be alerted via like you know, I know some of the certain rescue groups are alerted by like Instagram for instance, that like someone is missing, right, It's not like there is like despite this being massively overfunded, you can't just call and they won't just send out an ambulance like a lot a lot of a lot of times it is either the family members or like a bunch of volunteers just driving out there in the trucks at last night.
Like I can remember in running into some migrants in like twenty twenty three and then being like, hey, there are some other people down there, and I was like where, how do you know? And they found them on a snapchat mat wow, and like that that was you know, the only thing that maybe said those people's life. And yet it it's pretty brutal to think that like there's still really there's no one where there are people you can call, I'm help you, But it's not the people
who are getting billions of dollars. Let's talk very briefly before we finish up about deaths outside of the United States.
I see you have some data.
Like obviously my familiarity is with the Daddy and GAP, which good luck getting. I don't think that data exists. But like, I see you have a number of data points within Mexico. Can you explain like how you came across thovis and to what extent that data is if at all like representative or complete.
Yeah, so it's not at all representative or complete. It all comes from the National Institute of Integration, the.
I and M in Mexico. Yeah, I guess.
Actually the water working People's VETA are they're like sort of like quot n flot entity and it were migrants instituted by the government of Mexico in Mexico, and so we through the Mexican Golooya, you're able to get data from the group of veta, which throughout the years there's been kind of like changing locations of offices, so the data we had was just from where their offices are. So it's usually just sort of like a number of
deaths for that particular office for that particular year. It's very very limited, and there's many, many, many deaths that we then have other data to show that doesn't exist here. So it's really just planet right, Yeah, shouldn't be taken as any kind of like representative sample, or it's just the one piece of Mexican data that we were able to.
Quickly put on the map.
Yeah, we did get other data from like specific states in Mexico, but we through because of time and capacity and just the data itself we were unable to turn back into.
Yet we wouldn't do something with that.
Yeah, And I think it still remains true that like the single deadliest mind of this journey is the United States border, at least from this data that you're seeing. Would you say this data still supports that.
Probably I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, probably, I just don't want to say, because the data is just so bad in so many places, especially in Mexico abought.
Yeah, I'm thinking of like the Daddy in right, Like it's it's very deadly. I've seen people die there, Like
it's obviously a very very difficult and rugged place. But I think comparatively, probably more people die in the US border, just because there were more of them and because people come like people are ye, not everyone has to cross a dairy end, like people can fly to Mexico or somewhere further south, right and then come up that way where if people want to find this data, or perhaps as someone who's like a ninja with with data and data visualization, they want to offer to help, like where
can people find this and how can they reach out to no more desks if they'd like to help in some way.
Yeah, So just on the normal DOES website, we can see the report on the map and all that stuff. And in there there's a link to the media outreach email, which in the next couple of months is my email, and just feel free to send send an email there. And yeah, happy to.
Give greater accent right now.
The data is pretty anonymized for privacy and safety. Yeah, and there's a lot of the fields that we've kind of talked about that don't look here in the public database, so happy to share that with researchers, activists, advocacy.
People, chain us, things like that.
And also we desperately would have a lot to help, so you're interested in looking at some spreadsheets?
Yeah, yeah, cool, great, Thank you so much your time and for all the work on this. I know this was a lot of work getting those records and I think it. I know it gives us something to point to to show how many people this this border shit is killing totally.
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