"Heat has long threatened migrants crossing the Arizona desert. Now, amid the hottest years on record, it is putting missions to recover their bodies in jeopardy."
"AJO, Ariz. — The young Mexican soldier hefted his camouflage backpack and stepped through a hole in the border wall.
The temperature was 99 degrees and rising. José Antonio Salinas Pineda was carrying more than 40 pounds, much of it water. The Sonoran Desert lay ahead. He felt confident, he told his sister. On his military missions to burn poppy fields and hunt drug labs, Salinas had often camped out in rugged mountains, once surviving for a week with little food. He was now 21 — his birth date tattooed on his chest in Roman numerals — and strong.
His group — five migrants, led by a teenage smuggler — was scheduled to arrive in Phoenix, more than 100 miles away, by 5 p.m. the following day.
“Today we begin to walk,” he texted his family minutes before setting off in early June.
A day and a half later, slumped beneath a cactus, swollen and blistered, he could go no farther. The first rays of sun were rearing up over the horizon. The others shouldered their packs and walked away."
Joshua Partlow reports for the Washington Post September 25, 2024.
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