Nolte: July Deadliest Month Along Mexico-Arizona Border in ‘Two Years’

A group called Humane Borders claims that 19 bodies were recovered along the Arizona-Mexico border in July, the largest number of single-month deaths in two years.

That number is deceiving, as is using only two years as a measurement standard.

“[T]he remains of 73 people have been located this year in Arizona, compared with 59 this time last year and 103 for all of 2025,” Humane Borders claims. “The group has documented over 4,500 deaths along the Arizona-Mexico border over the last 25 years.”

“There’s this narrative that I’m sure you’ve heard that the border is effectively closed — that nobody is crossing. Well, this is pretty clear evidence that, not only are people crossing, like crossing recently, within the last few months- but also dying,” Brad Jones, a Humane Borders board member, said.

This, of course, is dreadful news. No one wants to see anyone die, especially out in the desert of exposure to some of the harshest elements on Earth.

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But.

Other than discouraging people from attempting to make this dangerous journey, which the Trump Administration is doing with more clarity than any Administration in my lifetime, what are we supposed to do about it?

Keep in mind that border enforcement has zero to do with these deaths. If people make it to the U.S. border, they are taken care of by Border Patrol. Therefore, no matter how high or low the border wall is, no matter how lax or stringent asylum requirements are, the people who die on the way still would have died on the way.

Let’s also add some context to this two-year number.

Last year, the first full year of Donald Trump’s second term, by Humane Borders own numbers, only 103 people died at the border through all of 2025. That is the lowest number of annual deaths since Humane Borders began tracking these deaths. I would add that that number is likely as low as it is because Trump’s border enforcement discourages people from making that dangerous journey.

The highest number of recorded annual deaths, since tracking began, is 229 in 2021, which is the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, the year he opened the border and encouraged people to make that perilous journey. By contrast, during his first year in office, Trump cut that number to 103 total annual deaths, or by more than half.

What’s more, those 19 deaths this July only sound high when compared to July of 2024, when only ten people died. During the four years of Biden’s open border, the number of July deaths was 21 in 2021, 31 in 2022, 42 in 2023, and 36 in 2024.

The only thing America can do to decrease these deaths is to discourage these journeys by making it clear there will be no reward at the other end. Biden told people there would be a reward, and the result was more deaths.