Agents patrolling the border between the United States and Mexico routinely find dead bodies of immigrants trying to sneak into the country. The toll of those who fail to make the difficult journey has averaged more than one dead body a day since the 1990s.

Over the last 15 years, 5,513 bodies have been recovered along the border. In 2012 alone, the total was 463.

The border area near Tucson, Arizona, has proven the most deadly since 2001, with 177 bodies found in the last fiscal year.

But fatalities have jumped significantly in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where the death toll went from 66 in 2011 to 150 last year. There is no medical examiner in the county, and the corpses of suspected illegal immigrants are buried in unnamed graves in a cemetery in the small town of Falfurrias.

Hundreds are never identified, either due to bodies being too decomposed or lack of identification. The Pima County Forensic Science Center alone has recorded 700 immigrant John and Jane Doe’s since the late 1990s.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

At Arizona's Border Morgue, Illegal Immigrant Bodies Keep Coming (by Elliot Spagat, Associated Press)

No More Deaths

Fish and Wildlife Service Allows Water Stations for Illegal Immigrants on Public Land  (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)