A pair of tattered, worn-out brown shoes in size 8, found in the middle of the Arizona desert; a dusted pink backpack of a child in the Rio Grande, two objects almost over 800 miles apart, what could those have in common? The two final traces of human lives lost on one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world, the U.S.-Mexico border, tell a story of hope and loss.
These are not independent instances; over 74,000 missing migrants have been reported across the globe since 2014 to March 2024 by the missing migrants project run by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and UN Migration.
Figure 1: Recorded migrant deaths over a decade by continent
Graphics – R Studio
Crisis in numbers
Of these numbers, over 11,000 migrants have died or disappeared while trying to cross through the Americas, more than 6,000 of these reported cases are recorded along the U.S.-Mexico border stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the tip of South Texas.
The 1,954-mile border winds through deserts, mountains, rivers, and cities that bustle with the sounds of idling car engines. Crossing these challenging paths is a leap in the dark, but what does one do when it is one of the only options to hope for a better life? For migrants from countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, and many more that are plagued by violence, political instability, and poverty, sometimes, these arduous paths are the light at the end of the tunnel.
Based on the data for 2014-2024, men account for 80 percent of deaths at the US-Mexico border; the number of women dying at the border has been increasing since 2020. About a quarter of the remains identified in the initial months of 2023 were female, which by the end of the year had reached a count of 106, showing an 8 percent increase over the previous year, 2022. The high female death counts reappear, especially from Mexico, Guatemala, and Venezuela. Meanwhile, the data from 2023–2024 displayed sustained death levels with multiple child fatalities, reflecting more families attempting crossings. According to data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a record 3.2 million encounters were reported in the Americas in 2023, which decreased to 2.9 million in 2024.
Figure 2: Nationwide encounters published by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection CBP.gov
Scale of migration
Examining the data closely for the southwestern land border, of the 2,135,005 migrants encountered in 2024, 916,125 (43 percent) were children or parents with children. The percentage was consistent for Border Patrol apprehensions alone, with 655,282 of 1,530,523 involving families. Experts suggest this may be due to a rise in family-based migration and restrictive asylum policies that force longer, more dangerous routes, particularly affecting women and children.
Hundreds of migrant deaths at the border remain unidentified due to a lack of documentation, poor DNA collection, and minimal cross-border data sharing.
Figure 4: Demographic data of the southwestern border apprehensions
Who is affected the most?
Extreme terrain, vast swamps, dense rain forest, and no roads, the extreme 60 miles. The Darien Gap is one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world yet every year, thousands of migrants cross the Darien. According to Panama’s National Migration Service, in 2020, 8,594 people entered through this border, and in 2023, this estimate reached a record 520,085 people crossing this route. In 2024, 302,203 crossed the Darien Gap.
According to UNICEF, in the first four months of 2024, more than 30,000 children on the move crossed the Darien Gap, a 40 per cent increase compared to the same period last in 2023.Honduras registered 133,518 migrants passing through its territory during the first three months of 2024, more than double the same period in 2023.
The top five nationalities of child and family migrants encountered in 2024 were from Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Colombia. For those bodies that could be identified, about 1,500 Mexicans have lost their lives trying to cross into the US border in the last decade. Migrants fleeing home countries with grave political and economic instability, like Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela, are also growing victims of death at the border.
Figure 5: Annual Border Patrol migrant encounters by country
“Often, a lot of people in Central America or South America flee some sort of economic crisis in their country or violence. For example, Honduras has been very violent recently, and Venezuela has an unfortunate economic crisis right now. So people come up through Central America to the United States. Sometimes, there will be people who take advantage of the crisis, like criminals who also try to come, and then they’ll try to cross the border. Usually, it will often be dangerous, not-so-legal ways to try to find a better life here. A lot of those countries have political instability or economic instability, and that drives people to immigrate en masse to the US,” said Dr Geoff Ganzberger, Professor in the Mathematics department at the University of California, San Diego.
Figure 6: Monthwise data of the migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico Border
Graphics: R Studio
The Missing Among the Missing, Data Gaps
The Arizona borderlands remain one of the most deadly stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border due to extreme heat, rough terrain, and enforcement measures that push people into more remote areas to avoid detection. The toll is likely even higher, given that many disappear without a trace, and the data is riddled with gaps. Some are never identified. Their families never learn their fate. Nowhere is the cost of life more concentrated than at the southern U.S. border.
The Journal on Migration and Human Security’s research, published in October 2024, found that in Arizona, the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office recorded 3,634 migrant deaths from FY 2000-2022, while the Border Patrol recorded only 3,069 deaths during the same period, an almost 17 percent difference between the two figures.
The border patrol apprehends those who cross the border, but the lifeless remains, bones, or skulls might not be in their ambit. While official statistics can explain the attempts, several individuals might remain in the shadows of being unknown if their clothes, belts, or wallets don’t show signs of their identity or birth countries.
Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border into nine different sectors. According to data published by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of these sectors would be migrants’ top destination for many years, leading all others in agents’ apprehensions. San Diego, California, was number one from 1973 through 1997; Tucson, Arizona, led from 1998 to 2012; Rio Grande Valley, Texas, was first from 2013 through December 2021. In 2023, Texas border apprehensions went down (-86 percent), and Arizona (-85 percent) led the four U.S.-Mexico border states with almost identical rates of decrease from December to September.
Figure 6: Border Patrol Apprehensions by state
Throughout the last decade, the Arizona and Texas border has claimed the maximum lives.
To the migrants walking miles on foot with the hopes of finding work and a better life, the dangers are several, not just being caught on the way, but also the unchallenged enemy, the weather. With the sun pulsating, scorching heat, and intense humidity, the temperatures can reach about 100 ° Fahrenheit. If migrants are lucky enough to survive the heat strokes and dehydration, another threat remains, of the smugglers, assailants, and kidnappers eyeing the migrants’ little pennies.
Their home country’s economic and political instability has driven migrants to go to America; they are not chasing dreams, they’re fleeing droughts, debt, hunger, joblessness, and fear. The COVID-19 Pandemic further accentuated these numbers. Almost every country in Latin America saw a sharp drop in GDP per capita in 2020, followed by a partial recovery in 2021. The economic contraction in 2020 was severe, erasing 5 -15 percent of income per capita in most countries. For already fragile economies, it deepened desperation. For thousands of migrants who died along the U.S.-Mexico border, the journey north was not an escape from their homes; it was an escape from a dead end. People move when survival becomes math; an invisible line often separates survival from desperation, and increasingly, that line is drawn in dollars.
In Venezuela, the economy collapsed by over two digits in a decade. As the economy withered, border apprehensions of Venezuelans skyrocketed to over 200,000 in 2023-2024(https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats ), and with the migration came the deaths, which have risen sharply since 2019. The country faces a deep economic crisis, with hyperinflation, shortages of basic goods, and high unemployment. According to the World Vision organisation, over 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled since 2014, driven by economic collapse attributed to oil sanctions and mismanagement.
The Duke Centre for International Development highlights agricultural stress due to climate change in Guatemala, worsening rural poverty, and driving migration. In Honduras, the numbers tell a quieter but equally cruel story. Despite a slight drop in the national homicide rate, violence continues to drive significant humanitarian needs in Honduras. The first half of 2024 recorded over 200 missing persons cases the Gender-based violence (GBV) is particularly widespread and is one of the main drivers of forced displacement.
With recent developments of the hard-line immigration policies of the U.S. Government, the Customs and Border Protection’s data showed a 93 percent decrease in crossings along the southwestern border in the month of June 2025, with migrant encounters falling to the lowest since 1960. Pete Flores, Acting Commissioner of CBP, in a statement, said that “Border numbers continue to trend at historic lows, reinforcing the sustained success of our enforcement efforts in securing the homeland and protecting American communities.”
While there have been strings of policies for mass deportation, a wave of asylum prohibitions, and cessation of the CBP One App used to schedule appointments at the port of entry, people continue to risk their lives being pushed through even more extreme and deadly pathways for entry, or trapped somewhere in between more perilous conditions, exposed to violence and abuse.
Humanitarian organizations must brace for increasingly complex migration flows, more women, more children, more families requiring emergency shelter, medical assistance, and psychosocial support along the route. Countries of origin face a harsher truth: GDP growth, when it occurs, is not reaching those most in need, and is not shielding communities from violence, political instability, or climate-induced hardship. “Even though the number of people on the move may have fluctuated, we still have thousands of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in Mexico who have urgent, unmet needs,” said Michelle Van Akin, associate director for humanitarian programmes for Plan International USA.
The evidence is clear: these numbers are not just historical records; they are someone’s reality at this moment. The unidentified bones on deserted paths were once people fleeing violence, instability, and falling economies in their countries. Migration does not just follow politics. It follows hunger. It follows debt. It follows collapsed currencies and rising prices. Economic data may rise and fall, policies may shift, but the forces propelling migration are deep-rooted and growing more complex. The lesson is stark: deterrence without humanitarian protection costs lives, and inaction cements the cycle of tragedy.
Acknowledgement: Special thanks for inputs from Chilian journalist Bárbara Pérez Yáñez, Chilean-Mexican journalist Daniella Carmona Alfaro, Pakistani journalist Nazish Tariq.
Anukriti is a journalist with a background in strategic communications, currently completing her master’s thesis at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in “Cultures and Contexts.” As part of her Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Media and Globalisation, she studied at Aarhus University in Denmark. She focuses on the humanitarian dimensions of cultural identity, migration, and conflict, telling stories through a human-interest lens. Having worked across South Asia and Europe, she brings a cross-cultural perspective to her reporting, exploring how people navigate belonging, displacement, and adaptation in a globalised world.