Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Season of Death

Marc Cooper describes the new "season of death" on the U.S.-Mexican border:

Virtually ignored by the national media, the new “season of death” on the U.S.-Mexican border got off to a grim start this past weekend as temperatures in southern Arizona suddenly spiked into triple digits. The resulting toll: a dozen dead from heat exposure and more than 75 rescues just between last Friday and this past Monday.

Border Patrol agents admitted that this past weekend was, indeed, the busiest three days on record when it came to trying to save the lives of stranded crossers.

Bodies of border crossers were found scattered throughout the state, though a majority were found in the desolate western half toward Yuma.

He contrasts the current media silence about this with the attention given to the issue, though from a different angle, in April:
Thousands of fawning stories were showered on last month’s fringe Minuteman Project (which I dissected here and here). But this weekend’s macabre death toll along the same patch of border has elicited only anemic interest among the major media. It’s beyond the border of hypocrisy.

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