Migrant deaths, extreme heat pushing Texas heat-related deaths to new highs

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Heat-related deaths in Texas last year hit a new high for this century amid a sharp spike in migrant deaths and rising temperatures exacerbated by climate change, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of state data from 1999.

In 2022, Texas experienced its second hottest summer on record during the state’s worst drought in more than a decade, according to data from state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon. Climate change has increased the risk of extreme temperatures across Texas, resulting in higher overall temperatures and summer heat that begins earlier in spring and lasts longer into fall — increasing the likelihood of people experiencing heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

At least 214 heat-related deaths were recorded in the first nine months of 2022 alone, the highest annual toll for the state since at least 1999, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

That number included 93 resident deaths, many of whom were homeless Texans and people without air conditioning. In Tarrant County, for example, about 70% of people who died from the heat were homeless or didn’t have working air conditioning, according to a county medical examiner’s report, which includes deaths from the first nine months of 2022. The examination board wanted to do so not express.

But more than half of Texas’ heat-related deaths last year, 121, were “nonresidents.” Last year was the third straight year that nonresident deaths from heat surpassed those of Texas residents.

Nonresidents can be residents of another state or country, according to the DSHS. But the fact that counties on or near the Texas-Mexico border — including Webb County and Brooks County — have led the state in heat-related deaths since 1999 suggests they’re mostly migrants who died during crossing the border died from heat-related causes.

Migration experts, lawyers and local officials say the data reflects what they see on the ground. They attribute the heat-related deaths to border security policies, which they say have forced migrants from preferred border crossings in urban areas to increasingly remote and dangerous routes. They added that Title 42 — an emergency public health order issued in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, designed to quickly expel migrants without giving them an opportunity to seek asylum — also reduced the number of border crossings increased by migrants.

At the same time, the danger of crossing the border was exacerbated by extreme heat, which last summer spanned dozens of days in the triple digits.

“We’re seeing a human rights crisis along the border,” said Fernando García, executive director of the El Paso-based advocacy group Border Network for Human Rights. “These deaths are of politics.”

While the number of migrants detained at the border continues to set records, the number of migrant deaths has also hit new highs: the US Border Patrol reported that it was hitting 30 in fiscal year 2022, which ended on March 7th – a figure that included deaths from heat , drowning and other causes. That’s more than triple the number reported in fiscal 2020, and the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, has called the Southwest border the “world’s deadliest land crossing.”

Texas also often has the highest number of recorded migrant deaths among the four states that border the US-Mexico border, which also include New Mexico, Arizona and California.

“Compared to other years, I’m seeing an extreme increase in the number of cross-border deaths,” Corrine Stern, the Webb County coroner who oversees 11 counties in South Texas, told KENS 5 in August. At the time, Stern said her office was preserving the bodies of 260 migrants and stopped accepting any more bodies for the first time in her 20-year career.

Stern turned down the Tribune’s recent interview requests, citing the high volume of cases she handles.

The heat-related deaths recorded by the state in these border counties are also likely to be a dramatic minority, experts say, as some migrants who die after crossing the border are never recovered or their bodies are found too late to determine the cause of death. And not all heat-related deaths are attributed to hyperthermia—overexposure to natural heat—as the primary cause.

For example, on a hot June day, 53 migrants from Mexico and Central America were found dead in a muggy semi-truck in San Antonio after their smuggler abandoned them. But DSHS recorded fewer than 10 heat-related deaths in Bexar County in the first nine months of 2022, meaning few, if any, of those migrants were recorded in the agency’s data for hyperthermia deaths.

DSHS declined to give the exact cause of the migrants’ deaths, but survivors of the articulated lorry were later treated in hospitals for heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Sylvia Dee, a climate scientist at Rice University, said climate change is “shifting the entire temperature distribution up”. As a result, Texas is exceeding heat indices dangerous to human health more frequently than in the past.

“People shouldn’t be outside at all in these temperatures,” Dee said.

Some experts also pointed out that extreme weather events, fueled by climate change, are one reason people choose to migrate in the first place.

“We constantly hear from migrant farm workers that the land is not what it used to be, that they cannot plan and they cannot harvest [in their home country] more,” said Luz Maria Garcini, a Rice University assistant professor who studies trauma and the health of immigrant communities.

And as global temperature continues to warm, climate migration is likely to become even more common, scientists have warned. According to the 2022 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, extreme weather events could uproot 143 million people worldwide in the next 30 years.

About 70 miles north of the border, Brooks County is home to one of the busiest border patrol checkpoints in Texas off US 281. To avoid this, migrants walk through miles of ranch land, but many are ill-equipped to trek through the thorny scrub. And the ride only gets more dangerous as the temperature and humidity rise.

“The ranches are where you see the most deaths,” Brooks County Judge Eric Ramos said. “Due to the distance from the border at the time [migrants] come to us, they are really exhausted. With the heat, the thickness of the brush just becomes overwhelming.”

Brooks County, which has a population of about 7,000, has had at least 202 heat-related deaths since 1999, according to DSHS data — the second-highest number among Texas’ 254 counties.

However, this is still likely to be a significant undercount. A 2020 report co-authored by Stephanie Leutert, a migration policy expert from the University of Texas at Austin, found at least 535 total migrant deaths in Brooks County between 2012 and 2019. Leutert said a large number of those deaths were likely related to heat but may not have been counted as heat-related deaths because their cause of death could not have been determined. Some, she said, may also have been assigned a separate cause of death, such as dehydration, which is often exacerbated by heat but can also occur in cold weather.

Ramos said the body count forced Brooks County to build a second morgue that will hold 40 bodies. He added that the county could soon hire more staff to rescue migrants or, if necessary, recover and identify the bodies of those who died while crossing.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Ramos said.

Eddie Canales, founder of the South Texas Human Rights Center in Brooks County, said his organization is also trying to increase its capacity to respond to the crisis.

Since 2013, his organization has installed about 150 water stations in Brooks County and surrounding areas, leaving water in large blue buckets, each holding several gallons. He and his volunteers make weekly trips to refill the water stations.

“Water is water,” Canales said on the phone as he filled his organization’s water stations in January. “People sweat and run for miles.”

The center also operates a hotline for people searching for loved ones who have disappeared crossing the border and assists with local government rescues and identification of deceased migrants, which Ramos says can require a significant chunk of Brooks County’s budget — one of which is The poorest counties of Texas.

“Everyone deserves some dignity in death,” Canales said.

Ultimately, experts, advocates and local officials said the country must go beyond deterrence-based border enforcement policies to stem the spate of migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border. For example, Ramos believes the federal government should reform the immigration system to create more legal avenues for migrants to work and ultimately obtain US citizenship.

“Climate change is definitely a killer for these people,” he said. “But the inability of our lawmakers in Washington to do their jobs is also a killer.”

Support for this reporting was provided by Columbia University’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.

Disclosure: Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin are financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial backers play no part in the Tribune’s journalism. A complete list can be found here.