The Killing Fields of the American Southwest

Killing fields -a place where heavy loss of life has occurred (often as a result of massacres, genocide, war and conflict I have lived in the southwest borderlands for over twenty years, a period that parallels the dramatic rise in migrant deaths along its boundary Now tallied at over 8,000 + . 1 Weather conditions are often extreme: each year the punishing summer heat -this past June a week of record breaking temperatures in Tucson (115F) and Phoenix (118 F) -combined with monsoon rains that turn desert washes (dry river beds) into torrents, while winter night temperatures may well linger below freezing.One hundred eighty-eight recovered bodies or skeletal remains were found in the Tucson sector in fiscal year 2021. 2 Less than half have been identified.They are the de facto disappeared. 3 Yet, these migrant deaths are not simply due to bad luck, being misinformed, or random acts of nature.The loss of so many lives while crossing the Sonoran Desert, 800,000 square miles straddling the US-Mexico divide, over the past two decades must be framed within a set of ongoing US Federal policies and practices.By the mid 1990s then President Bill Clinton adopted the "prevention through deterrence" strategy, premised on a combination of US Department of Defense Center for Low Intensity Conflict policy document and the Border Patrol Strategic Plan of 1994.Both reports advocated for forcing migrants to travel across the more dangerous regions of the borderlands.In particular, the strategy 4 was designed to push people away from more established routes located near ports of entry and into the harsh terrain of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.Government officials claimed publicly that

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