NEW REPORT FINDS PIMA COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT HAS HISTORY OF NOT RESPONDING TO CALLS FROM LOST MIGRANTS

Danyelle Khmara, AZPM News, 20 November 2023

A new report found that the way the Pima County Sheriff’s Department responds to distress calls from undocumented migrants lost in the desert is discriminatory, violates the department’s own standards of conduct, and has led to deaths and disappearances that could have been avoided. The sheriff’s department disputes these findings.

Advocacy group No More Deaths reviewed more than two thousand 911 calls handled by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department from the summer of 2016 to the summer of 2018, a sample of 64 emergency calls transferred to Border Patrol in June 2022, and another 4 cases of English speakers calling for emergency search and rescue during the same month, which No More Deaths obtained under public records law.

NO MORE DEATHS REPORT: “SEPARATE AND DEADLY” REVEALS DISCRIMINATORY 911 CALL SYSTEM IN US/MEXICO BORDERLANDS

ImmigrationProf Blog, 15 November 2023

Yesterday, No More Deaths released Separate and Deadly: Segregation of 911 Emergency Services in the Arizona Borderlands. The report is the latest installment of Disappeared, a four-part series that examines the Border Patrol’s role in the deaths and disappearances in the U.S./Mexico border region. Separate and Deadly analyzes the Pima County (Arizona) Sheriff’s Department’s emergency response system. The report finds vastly different responses to the distress calls on 911 of migrants based on their citizenship status. Migrant distress calls are routinely transferred to the Border Patrol, which No More Deaths says has “demonstrated a deadly negligence when it comes to emergency response and rescue.”  In 2023, the remains of 175 people have been found in Arizona. Countless more remain disappeared.