ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV

U.S. Border Patrol agents reported the body to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office at 7 a.m. Monday, and deputies dispatched to the scene retrieved the body, now in the custody of the Pima County medical examiner’s office, Gerardo Castillo, county under-sheriff, told the ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV.

An investigator with the medical examiner’s office said it could be weeks until a cause of death is determined. But a humanitarian volunteer who attempted to render aid said the woman had no visible injuries, and did not appear to have died from exposure. Low temperatures dropped to 19 overnight in the border region Monday morning.

The woman is still unidentified, but she was carrying documents indicating she was from Mexico, said Gene Hernandez, investigator supervisor at the Pima County medical examiner’s office.

Early Monday morning, near the mountainous place where the border wall ends, about 22 miles east of the port of entry in Sásabe, humanitarian volunteers encountered the 15-year-old son of the deceased woman, just as border agents were arriving to pick up asylum seekers waiting to surrender.

The teenager ran along the border wall road toward the volunteers, screaming for help and saying his mother was not breathing, according to a volunteer with the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans, who worked as an ICU nurse for decades before her retirement.

“He was almost not understandable, he was so upset,â€� said the volunteer, who asked the ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV to only use her first name, Sally, because she feared for her safety if her unique last name were to be published. Right-wing vigilantes have already “doxxedâ€� her once before, spreading her identifying information on social media, she said.

Along with another volunteer with medical training, Sally went to examine the boy’s mother, whose body had been propped up against the border barrier, and determined she no longer had a pulse.

About 10 minutes prior, the volunteers had seen a vehicle in Mexico speeding toward the end of the border wall. The 15-year-old boy said his mother had stopped breathing while in the vehicle, Sally said.

“This is speculation, but I believe the driver knew she was probably already dead and were rushing her to put her over the wall into U.S. side,� she said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the woman was already dead when agents encountered her and said the agency did not expect to release any more information.

The lack of legal pathways to reach the U.S. — and barriers to using the CBP One phone application, which the Biden administration requires for most asylum seekers — are factors resulting in desperate people crossing the border between ports of entry, risking their lives in the process, humanitarian workers say.

A coalition of nonprofit aid groups has established an ongoing humanitarian response in this remote place east of Sásabe, which has become a common dropping off point for human smugglers in Sonora. In the second half of 2023, smugglers were at times dropping off hundreds of people daily here.

As gaps in the border wall closer to the border town of Sásabe were closed by the Biden administration throughout 2023, human smugglers in Sonora began dropping off migrants and asylum seekers further east. In fall 2023, an outbreak of violence between factions of the Sinaloa Cartel also diverted human smuggling routes away from previous paths closer to Sásabe.

Border agents’ transport vehicles were struggling to manage the roller-coaster steep hills in the remote area, leaving asylum seekers exposed to the elements — extreme heat in the summer and life-threatening cold in the winter — for more than 24 hours at times, volunteers said.

Since then volunteers with the Tucson and Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans, Humane Borders and No More Deaths have been coordinating to ensure a daily presence for arrivals east of Sásabe, providing first aid, food, water, blankets and shade to migrants as they waited for border agents to arrive.

Last year Doctors Without Borders visited this spot to do a medical assessment and concluded a “humanitarian medical crisis� exists here, attributing a lack of deaths so far to humanitarian groups’ daily work there.

“I know we have saved lives out there,� Charles Cameron, a volunteer with the Tucson Samaritans, said Monday. “We’ve already lost over 4,000 people that we know of in that desert in the last two decades, and we’re trying to prevent that.�

Border agents have been visiting the area more routinely since last winter, with a set schedule of four pick-ups per day, volunteers say.

“It is actually a fairly efficient system,� Cameron said. “We try to separate the single adults from families and children, and so when they (agents) arrive a lot of the work is already done, and it’s a simple hand-off for these folks to get into processing. ... It’s not even close to ideal, but it’s improved appreciably because there’s predictability and communication between Border Patrol and our organizations.�

In spring 2024 the aid groups, with help from Doctors Without Borders, constructed a make-shift camp to store donated goods and to offer basic shelter to asylum seekers waiting to turn themselves in to border agents. But far-right vigilantes and social-media personalities have targeted the camp, falsely accusing volunteers of working with the “cartels� and being human traffickers.

Smugglers are still dropping off migrants east of Sásabe, but the number has plummeted over the last year, there and border-wide. Experts say that’s both due to the Biden administration’s June 2024 order restricting access to asylum, resulting in thousands of rapid deportations back to Mexico weekly, and also due to aggressive enforcement in Mexico, preventing migrants from reaching the U.S. border, at the behest of the Biden administration.