They come by the hundreds of thousands, mostly honest people seeking better jobs than they can get in their homeland.

And they die by the hundreds in Arizona's unforgiving desert.

Combine all the homicides and all the motor vehicle fatalities in Pima County each year and you'll have roughly the number of illegal immigrants who die trying to cross the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector in the same period.

While arrests of illegal immigrants have fallen, the number of people dying in the desert and along its roads is rising dramatically.

Read the article by David L. Teibel in the Tucson Citizen

Some Arizonans undoubtedly have taken heart from recent news reports - largely speculative - that illegal immigrants are preparing to self-deport to Mexico once the state's tough new employer sanctions law takes effect in January.

Perhaps they should hold off on the good-riddance party and replace it with a history lesson. Any unseemly rejoicing ignores the role immigrants have played in the building of America and the vibrant economy we enjoy.

"This is a nation peopled by the world," said Ronald Takaki, an internationally recognized scholar on multiculturalism.

The factors that "pushed" people out of their countries are varied, but there is one consistent reason the U.S. has "pulled" them here, he said.

Read the full article by Anne Denogean in the Tucson Citizen

SASABE, Ariz. — “I can’t breathe,” Felicitas Martínez Barradas gasped to her cousin as they stumbled across the border in 100-degree heat. “The sun is killing me.”

They had been walking for a day and a half through the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona, the purgatory that countless illegal immigrants pass through on their way from Mexico to the United States.

Ms. Martínez was 29 and not fit. A smuggler handed her a can of carbonated energy drink and caffeine pills. But she only got sicker and passed out, said her cousin, Julio Díaz.

Read the full article by Randal C. Archibold in The New York Times.

Related media feature can be found here.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Deaths along much of the Arizona-Mexico border are ahead of the record pace set two years ago despite tightened border security expected to discourage migrants from crossing, a border county medical examiner said.

The office of Pima County medical examiner Dr. Bruce Parks, which performs autopsies on many of the illegal immigrants who die in Arizona, has tallied 181 bodies or sets of remains recovered between Jan. 1 and Sept 8.

Last year, 148 bodies were recovered during that period. In 2005, officials found 166 during that period.

Read the full article by By Arthur H. Rotstein in Associated Press

Figures released Wednesday afternoon by the U.S. Border Patrol show 186 suspected illegal immigrants have died in the Tucson sector this fiscal year.
The Tucson sector includes all of Arizona except for Yuma, La Paz and Mohave counties, Border Patrol Agent Sean King said.

The death toll covers the period from the beginning of the fiscal year, Oct. 1, to Aug. 31. The federal fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

Read the full article by David L. Teibel in the Tucson Citizen