Report: About 6,000 Migrants Have Died Trying to Cross US-Mexico Border Since 2000

According to a new report by the International Organization for Migration, at least 40,000 migrants have died trying to reach a new land since 2000.

The report, titled "Fatal Journeys Tracking Lives Lost during Migration," was published on Monday. It found that about 22,000 of the deaths were of migrants trying to reach Europe (almost 4,000 of the fatalities happened after the beginning of 2013).

Almost 6,000 of the 40,000 died on the United States-Mexico border.

In addition, 3,000 died from various migration routes, including across the Sahara Desert in Africa and the Indian Ocean.

"Our message is blunt: Migrants are dying who need not," said William Lacy Swing, IOM director general, according to CNN. "It is time to do more than count the number of victims. It is time to engage the world to stop this violence against desperate migrants."

According to the report, in North America, the highest number of migrant fatalities occurs on vertical migrant trails in Mexico and horizontally on the U.S.-Mexico border.

"During their journey through Mexico, Guatemalans Salvadorans, Hondurans and others travelling through irregular channels face severe dangers as they journey north, many crowding atop lurching freight trains and navigating organized crime," the report says. "Once at the United States-Mexico border, they face an increasingly constricted barrier where the only clandestine passageways are through remote, inhospitable desert or mountain geographies."

Other risks migrants trying to enter the U.S. face include suffocating in commercial trucks while trying to cross the border in cargo compartments, drowning in irrigation canals and rivers, falling off mountain cliffs, freezing in Arizona and California mountains and being hit by cars while crossing highways on foot.

"The paradox is that at a time when one in seven people around the world are migrants in one form or another, we are seeing an extraordinarily harsh response to migration in the developed world," Swing said.

According to the IOM, the number of migrant deaths is probably "considerably higher" than reported.

"Although vast sums of money are spent collecting migration and border control data, very few agencies collect and publish data on migrant deaths," said Frank Laczko, IOM research chief.

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