A U.S. Border Patrol officer appealed directly to would-be migrants earlier this month to think twice before making the border crossing in dangerous summer temperatures.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens made his appeal in a July 10 Twitter post.
"Over the weekend, extreme temperatures contributed to 45 individuals being rescued and 10 individuals who died due to the dangerous heat and conditions," Owens said in his Twitter post. "Make no doubt about it, summer is here, and the hottest days are yet upon us. Don't put your life in the hands of a smuggler."
Owens isn't the only person taking to Twitter commenting about migrants crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.
U.S. House Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), in a Tweet about her appearance on Fox News, blamed the Biden Administration's policies for the continued influx of migrants attempting to cross the southern border.
"We have open borders, we're not sending people back," Duyne said in her July 14 Twitter post. "We're collecting them, sending them throughout our country, and this is happening over and over again as a result of the Biden border policies."
In an earlier Twitter post, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Chief Anthony "Scott" Good of El Paso referred to the dangers of making the border crossing.
"This FY [fiscal year], El Paso Sector has recorded over 70 migrant deaths in the remote desert of New Mexico," Good said in his July 7 Twitter post. "As temperatures soar, criminal organizations continue to endanger the lives of smuggled migrants by placing profit over their safety. One migrant life lost is one too many!"
Those reported high temperatures are real and so are the dangers migrants face. Tucson Samaritans member Gail Kocurek said in a Arizona's Family news story published on July 14 comments that the migrants don't know what they're getting into.
"They’re shocked when they find out how far it is," Kocurek said. "They're shocked when they find out how hot it is. They're shocked when they find out how dangerous it is, because they get lied to."
FoxNews reported the same day that migrants are using human smugglers to enter the country and that a federal judge on July 13 handed down a 15-year prison sentence to Jose Cruz Noguez, who allegedly organized a human smuggling operation. Noguez's alleged operation packed two dozen migrants into a Ford Expedition that ended up colliding with a tractor-trailer, killing 13 near a town in the California desert.
"He and his co-conspirators treated these individuals like a worthless commodity," U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said in the FoxNews story.
CBS reported last year that fiscal 2022 marked the deadliest year for migrants recorded by the U.S. government, with at least 853 individuals losing their lives while attempting to unlawfully cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
