SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (KFOX14) — According to the Department of Homeland Security, the number of illegal border crossings has dropped significantly since President Biden announced new restrictions on asylum last month.
But the number of migrants who are dying at our border continues to climb.
That’s especially true in the community of Sunland Park, N.M. That’s where a small, overburdened fire department finds itself stretched thin, trying to save lives and retrieve bodies in the unforgiving summer heat.
Almost daily, the Sunland Park Fire Department is called to remote corners of the desert to rescue stranded migrants or, tragically, to recover their lifeless bodies.
“I think everything is being funneled down through Sunland Park and that’s why we’re seeing the rise in body recoveries and injuries with migrants,” said Captain Abraham Garcia, a 20-year veteran of the Sunland Park Fire Department. He started with the agency when he was 19. But these days, he and his fellow firefighters are adapting to a new and challenging reality.
“All our career we’ve been taught EMS, fire, snake, bees, the usual stuff for us,” Garcia said. “Now it’s body recoveries, in the river, you know, all the traumas off the wall. So we have to change our tactics a little bit to accommodate what’s happening here in this environment.”
Sunland Park is part of the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which covers all of New Mexico. According to Customs and Border Protection, migrant deaths in the El Paso sector have surged, more than doubling from 2022 to 2023.
“There’s 149 deaths last year, which is a high number for us,” said El Paso Border Patrol Sector Chief Anthony Scott Good. “And 90 percent of them were out here in this desert.”
With the extreme heat and stricter border policies now in place, the death toll could rise even higher.
“Last year was a shocker, if you will,” said Sunland Park Fire Chief Danny Medrano. “We had in Southern Dona Ana County, we had 130-plus body recoveries. All of them were migrants. All of them we assume succumb to heat injuries. They were all in the summer.”
Medrano oversees an agency with 24 firefighters and two stations. They respond to fires and medical emergencies in the community. But Medrano says his department is also dedicating significant resources to assist Border Patrol with migrant rescues and recoveries.
“I get an argument that they’re migrants, why are we working so hard on migrants,” said Medrano. “When I take an oath, or when any of my guys or any firefighter in the world takes an oath to wear this badge, it’s not for the citizens or the people who pay taxes or whatever, it’s for all human beings. And that’s what we’re doing, we’re treating all human beings the same. Equal.”
This year, the Sunland Park Fire Department adopted a new method for immersing heat-stroke patients in ice-filled bags, to try to bring body temperatures down much faster.
“I by no means take full credit for this, because I reach out to my guys and I need ideas,” Medrano said. “Together we came up with what we’re using today and even last week we did some tweaks to make sure we’re doing the best we can for these patients.”
The new approach seems to be working, but the desert sun is still a deadly foe. This year alone, the agency has recovered more than 20 bodies. The loss of life is chronicled on the department’s social media pages and on a whiteboard in Station Two, where the count keeps climbing.
So what’s happening that makes our terrain so deadly? We all know the desert gets really hot. But we also have little to no humidity. And humidity is what controls surface temperatures. So without humidity, the surface of the sand gets dangerously hot. If it’s 107 degrees outside, the surface of the sand can reach 140 degrees.
“People that are conducting the investigations take temperatures of not necessarily just the body but the surrounding area, and yesterday the temperature around the body in the sand was 156 degrees,” said Battalion Chief Ramiro Rios.
Last month, the tragic situation in Sunland Park took a devastating turn. Firefighters were called to recover the bodies of three migrants who drowned while attempting to cross the treacherous, muddy waters of the Rio Grande.
“When we arrived, they had pulled one out, and were attempting to rescue the fourth,” said Rios. “Unfortunately, by the time we got on scene, we could see the bodies and they were already face down and floating down the river.”
The chaotic scene stretched to the Texas side of the river, amidst the razor wire meant to deter migrants from crossing the border.
“You feel for these people,” Rios said. “You feel the desperation of them leaving their country and trying to come here. But to get here and to die within yards of the border wall or make it all the way through the desert and to drown in the Rio Grande of all places. It’s just hard to understand.”
And it takes a toll on the young firefighters in Sunland Park.
“I can’t describe the feeling, it’s a weird, not normal feeling,” said firefighter Luis Marquez, who helped to recover the migrants who drowned in the river.
“At the moment, it’s just part of work. We just gotta get it done. But after a while, it does hit you. It was a human life.”
The veteran firefighters do what they can to help their younger colleagues cope. But they know that summer is just starting.
“When I was young and I started doing this, I knew that there was going to be death and risk, it comes with the job. But these past two years, we’ve just seen so much that it’s become the new normal. And it changes you. But between crews talking, as you saw, we were BS’ing at the table, that’s how we get through this stuff, because it doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop anytime soon.”
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