What challenges do migrants seeking to reach the US face?
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Eagle Pass, Texas (CNN) --
On the banks of the Rio Grande River, Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber pointed to the spot where a 3-year-old boy had drowned just a day earlier.
"He was given medical care," Schmerber said.
"He died anyway."
The boy's white T-shirt had a cloudy tint in an autopsy photo.
Schmerber pointed downriver and said "three or four" adult immigrants recently drowned there.
She pulled out her phone and showed CNN some of the most recent autopsy and death scene photos of immigrants in her county.
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"I feel sad for the families," Schmerber said.
The sight of migrant bodies floating ashore or turning up on surrounding ranches has recently become an almost daily occurrence, says Schmerber.
In Maverick County, unidentified immigrants are being buried in the county cemetery, due to the recent spike in immigrant deaths.
The number of migrants trying to cross has continued to rise, and the surge in arrivals is leading to more deaths, according to Schmerber.
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Some of the deaths are also due to migrants taking increasing risks to evade detection by federal authorities, he says.
People are crossing the tumultuous Rio Grande, or Rio Grande, trekking through dangerous ranches in record Texas heat and paying the ultimate price, the sheriff adds.
It's something immigrant rights advocates have warned of as the latest tragic trend: People are being forced down increasingly risky paths due to a mix of border policies that have made it harder for immigrants to seek refuge in the US. .
So many migrants, including children, who have tried to cross the southern US border have died in this region that the forensic pathologist working in the area says 2022 is on track to become the deadliest year on record in recent memory. .
"I'm seeing an extreme increase in the number of deaths crossing the border compared to other years," said Dr. Corrine Stern, Webb County Medical Examiner.
"This is the busiest year of my career."
Stern has been in practice for 20 and serves 11 counties in South Texas, including Maverick.
So far this year, 218 migrants have died, she said, a number that already surpassed the 196 deaths that occurred in the same episode last year, when he served 12 counties.
Stern's job includes not only determining the cause and manner of death, but also identifying the migrants and notifying next of kin, which can be a time-consuming process, especially as migrants of nationalities he hasn't seen before are dying. in your region.
Some of the countries of origin include Peru, Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela, and Colombia.
Due to frosty relations between the US and some of those nations, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to obtain identifying information, she explained.
The surge in deaths and the delay in identifying the deceased has created a problem Stern says he has never faced before: With 260 migrant bodies in his custody in five refrigerators, he has run out of space.
She says she informed officials in the counties she serves that they needed to store the bodies of dead new migrants at their funeral homes until her office had space available.
"We just don't have the storage capacity right now because of the sheer number that we're seeing," Stern said.
At least one funeral home in his jurisdiction, Memorial Funeral Chapels in Eagle Pass, told CNN that it is also full.
A body recovered from the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass Texas is picked up by a local funeral home.
As a result, the funeral home has begun burying unidentified immigrants in the Maverick County Cemetery.
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In the back of the cemetery, beyond the custom headstones surrounded by flowers, are 16 fresh graves marked with partial crosses made from scrap PVC pipe.
Each grave is also marked with a small sign indicating that the persons buried are Jane and John Does.
One says it's for a "Baby John" Doe who lost his life.
It is the mounting death toll of migrant children that haunts Stern.
He says that so far this year he has identified six deaths of minors, ages 1, 7, 13 and three 17-year-olds.
The youngest migrant victims, he says, involve children in the womb.
Most recently, a pregnant Haitian woman died in Maverick County.
She was expecting twins.
"That's not just a mom drowning. It's a mom and her two kids drowning," Stern said.
Earlier this week, Stern asked one of his assistants to bring one of the recently arrived deceased immigrants to the autopsy room for an initial examination.
As the black body bag was unzipped and a backpack and jeans were removed from inside, Dr. Stern read the case notes.
This was a 22-year-old construction worker from Mexico who crossed into Texas with his brother last week.
They had been walking for three days without eating, he said.
Stern pointed to scratches on his arms that likely came from walking through brush, he said.
There were still white medical patches on his body, clues that he had received medical attention.
"There are a lot of paramedics attached to the Border Patrol. They tried to save his life, but they couldn't," Stern said.
Since October, federal agents on the US southern border have conducted 18,897 searches and rescues of migrants, up from 12,833 life-saving attempts the previous year, according to US Customs and Border Protection statistics.
In the past year, migrants interviewed by CNN along the US-Mexico border have cited violence, climate change and economic downturns in their home countries as factors driving their dangerous journeys to the United States. .
Migrants dry their shoes on a sidewalk after crossing the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas.
A 20-year-old Nicaraguan national who crossed into Maverick County this week and was waiting for Border Patrol agents to pick him up when CNN spoke with him also pointed to equal rights for the LGBTQ community as a reason immigrants they want to come here.
"From what I've seen, there's a lot of support for the (gay) community and there's not a lot of discrimination, (compared) to other countries I've been through," Bryan Moraga told CNN in Spanish.
This could go on forever, says the sheriff
Driving down a dirt road that runs parallel to the Rio Grande River, Sheriff Schmerber says he sees immigrants, many with children, cross into his county every day.
He points to the new barbed-wire fence that now surrounds the banks and says Gov. Greg Abbott installed the barrier earlier this year, but it hasn't stopped migrants from crossing.
He slows down when he sees that various articles of clothing are draped over the coils of sharp metal.
"Look over there, they're wearing their clothing to protect themselves and make it easier to cross," Sheriff Schmerber said.
During the current fiscal year, federal agents have encountered a record nearly 2 million migrants, federal data shows.
By definition, a migrant "encounter" is when migrants are detained, evaluated, investigated, and returned to Mexico under Title 42, are removed from U.S. soil, or are placed under Title 8 removal proceedings by federal immigration authorities. .
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From fiscal years 2006 through 2021, the largest number of migrant "encounters" occurred in 2021, when 1.7 million migrants tried to enter the US illegally through the southern border, according to a federal law enforcement source.
US Customs and Border Protection declined an interview for this story.
The Biden administration has defended its multi-tiered border security strategy, signaling the launch of an unprecedented operation to disrupt human smuggling networks amid a continued surge in border crossings in recent months.
After 53 migrants died in a burning tractor-trailer in San Antonio this summer, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he was "heartbroken" and called human traffickers "heartless individuals" who must be held accountable for the death of migrants.
Last week, at least four immigrants were found dead in Maverick County, according to Schmerber.
On Monday, US Border Patrol agents discovered an unconscious baby floating in the water, according to an agency spokesperson.
That baby was eventually transferred to a local hospital.
When officers later returned to the area, they found the boy drowned.
Around 10 a.m. Tuesday, his agents received a call from Border Patrol about a man floating in the river.
"I see the bodies and it's something I feel bad about because (these are) people who come here thinking of a better future," Sheriff Schmerber said.
Schmerber says he doesn't agree with all of Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott's border initiatives, but applauds him for pumping millions of dollars and sending hundreds of agents to beef up border security in his county.
But as a retired Border Patrol agent who is now a sheriff, Schmerber says he knows immigration is the province of the federal government and hopes President Joe Biden visits the border to witness the realities on the ground.
If nothing is done to curb the immigration problem, today's deadly reality, says Schmerber, "will go on forever."
