Finding missing migrants along the US-Mexico border, the world’s deadliest land migration route

Ajo, Arizona — The search began with a prayer in the early morning hours as the sun peeked out from behind the mountains that dot this picturesque, but often deadly, landscape near the U.S.-Mexico border.

It was the third search undertaken this summer by a group of volunteers known as the Armadillos in hopes of finding José Salinas Pineda, a 21-year-old Mexican migrant who has been missing since early June.

Back in their homes in Southern California, the volunteers are construction workers, gardeners, and cable men. Like the people they seek, most are immigrants. But in the desolate Arizona desert, the volunteers share a humanitarian mission: to bring a little peace to distraught families by finding the remains of their loved ones.

“For me it’s not fair that this person stays here, in this place,” Roberto Resendiz said as the Armadillos gathered around him for a bilingual pep talk for the search party. Resendiz, 48, is one of the group’s leaders.

By this place, Resendiz meant the barren Sonoran Desert. Migrants cross this desert every day to reach the United States, despite the dangers of crossing an inhospitable terrain with temperatures that reach triple digits in the summer.

The volunteers donned boots, shin guards, walking sticks and overstuffed backpacks, and carried large quantities of water, electrolytes, granola bars, first aid kits and homemade wooden crosses to mark the remains of migrants.

When they began searching a large area within Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the volunteers had only three leads to find Salinas Pineda. They were told that his traveling companions had abandoned the young migrant when he became severely fatigued near a mountain known as “El Buda,” or the Buddha, a nod to his all-seeing, towering form. He was wearing black shoes and camouflage clothing.

Resendiz, a full-time construction worker, said he has been searching for missing migrants along the U.S. southern border for about 18 years. He and other volunteers often fail to find the people they seek. Most of those they find are already dead. Those who are still alive are dehydrated and in need of medical attention.

Given the three months that had passed since Salinas Pineda disappeared and their own experiences in the inhospitable desert, the Armadillos knew all too well that the chances of finding him alive were slim.

“It’s a long time,” Resendiz said. “But we can’t lose hope.”

“The deadliest land route for migrants”

Most of the migrants crossing the U.S. border as part of the record surge in recent years have turned themselves in to U.S. immigration agents to begin asylum processes that normally take years.

But some migrants try to enter the country undetected, especially Mexican men, who are at the greatest risk of rapid deportation if apprehended by U.S. agents. These migrants often travel along the most remote parts of the border. The chances of passing through undetected are greater, but so are the chances of dying along the way.

The migration journey across the U.S.-Mexico border has long proven deadly for many. Between fiscal years 1998 and 2020, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded between 200 and 500 migrant deaths annually.

The death toll has grown even grimmer in recent years. The number of migrant deaths recorded by Border Patrol rose to 568 in fiscal year 2021, then climbed to nearly 900 in fiscal year 2022 — a record high. In fiscal years 2023 and 2024, Border Patrol recorded 704 and 560 migrant deaths, respectively, according to unpublished agency data obtained by CBS News.

The deaths prompted the United Nations to describe the US-Mexico border as “the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide.”

Customs and Border Protection officials told CBS News that the sharp rise in reported migrant deaths in recent years largely reflects the overall record-breaking increase in migrant encounters during that time. But advocates say government policy also plays a role. They argue that stricter border regulations, such as the partial asylum ban announced by President Biden in June encourage migrants to enter the country through remote areas to avoid being detained and deported.

Justin De La Torre, the deputy chief Border Patrol agent in the Tucson sector, said the advocates’ claims are “simply untrue.” He noted that the government has programs in place to help migrants enter the U.S. legally and safely, including a system that allows it to process 1,500 people a day at legal entry points. He said CBP also uses helicopters, rescue beacons and other resources to locate and assist migrants stranded in the desert.

“The decision to cross the border at the most remote locations along the southwest border is a decision that the criminal organizations make, and they alone make that decision,” De La Torre said, referring to smugglers who shuttle migrants across the border for a high price.

In Texas, migrants sometimes drown in the Rio Grande. In other areas, migrants drop dead after scaling the border wall. But the Arizona desert consistently has the highest number of border deaths, according to federal and local statistics.

In Pima County, which covers much of the Arizona border, the coroner has discovered nearly 4,000 migrant remains since the turn of the century — an average of 165 a year. The remains range from fully fleshed bodies to those that decompose after days in the desert to the skeletons of migrants who have been missing for months.

According to the Pima County coroner, the most common profile of someone whose body was found in the desert matches the description of Salinas Pineda: a Mexican man between the ages of 20 and 29.

‘Paying’ for the American Dream

Lucero Salinas Pineda, 29, said she was in disbelief when she learned her brother was gone. If anyone was going to survive the trek north, she thought, it would be her brother, a young and fit man who had military training in Mexico.

Before migrating, Salinas Pineda was assigned by the Mexican military to disrupt illegal drug trafficking in the state of Sinaloa, which his sister said is known as one of the epicenters of a cartels’ smuggling route out of the country. Because of the nature of his work, Salinas Pineda became increasingly concerned about his family’s safety in Mexico, Lucero said.

Those concerns prompted Salinas Pineda to leave Morelos, a state in central Mexico where he lived with his sister and parents. In early June, he reached the Arizona-Mexico border, planning to work in California for a few years and send money home.

“My brother left on Saturday, June 1, when I received the last message from him, around 2:08 in the afternoon,” Lucero said in Spanish.

Lucero said she and her parents tried repeatedly to call Salinas Pineda, but to no avail. Eventually, she said, the family was told her brother had been abandoned in the desert by the people who had smuggled him into the U.S. for $8,000.

Lucero, a lawyer by trade, began a frantic search for her brother, contacting anyone with information on his whereabouts. She said she was able to track down Border Patrol officials, the Mexican consulate in Tucson and even the migrants traveling with her brother, who she said were arrested and deported to Mexico.

After running into one dead end after another, she began looking for other ways to find him, eventually finding volunteers who were scouring the border for missing migrants.

That’s when Resendiz and the Armadillos decided to help. The Armadillos’ search earlier this month in the Sonoran Desert was the third and final search aimed solely at finding Salinas Pineda.

After nine hours of hiking through 12 miles of rugged terrain filled with cacti and monsoon streams with a group of reporters, the Armadillos found an animal bone, water jars and clothing that were probably left behind by migrants who had managed to get out of the desert. But there were no signs of Salinas Pineda.

A few days after that failed search, Lucero said she even considered going to the US and walking through the Arizona desert herself in search of her brother.

Lucero worried about her brother’s journey before he left for the north.

“If anything happens to you,” she remembers telling him, “guess who’s going to be looking for you? I’ll be the only one looking for you.”

“I said to him, ‘Are you sure you want to go?’” Lucero said. “He had the example of my father, who had emigrated to the United States to live the American dream, which we are now paying for.”

Still, Lucero says she hopes her brother is alive somewhere, but he can’t reach her and her family.

“I know that wherever my brother is, he knows that I’m looking for him,” Lucero said.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez

Camilo Montoya-Galvez is an immigration reporter for CBS News. He lives in Washington and writes about immigration policy and politics.