Callous human smugglers are nudging migrants to scale the 30-foot wall at the US border — resulting in hundreds getting seriously injured or killed from falling off.
Nine migrants were killed last year after plunging from the barrier between the US and Mexico at just one hospital in El Paso, with another 326 others treated for often horrific injuries from the falls of up to three-stories, USA Today reported.
Through October of this year, another medical facility in San Diego reported 345 trauma injuries from wall falls, including 70 in October alone — an average of more than two a day.
The scene is repeated across the border.
“We noticed starting right around 2020 the numbers had gone up,” Dr. Susan McLean, surgical ICU director at the University Medical Center in El Paso, told USA Today.
“It qualifies as a public health problem,” McLean said. “It’s a preventable problem with serious consequences.”
The casualties come as thousands of migrants continue flocking to the border at the behest of greedy traffickers who deposit them at the Mexican side of the wall after often long and arduous journeys — leaving the desperate migrants little choice.
Once at the border wall the smugglers, often working quickly to avoid detection, typically throw a rope ladder over the top of the wall on the Mexican side.
Migrants have to pull themselves up it, but there is nothing on the US side leaving them to jump to the floor. During this perilous drop is when most accidents happen.
“They don’t treat you like a queen,” one migrant who shattered her foot told the outlet. “You have to climb.”
No comprehensive lists are maintained on the number of immigrants who are injured or killed climbing the wall, and many injuries go unreported as those affected make off from the scene but US Customs and Border Protection data shows that in 2021 — the most recent data available — 19 migrants out of 151 deaths at the border died from falls.
In September, after a 30-year-old woman was killed after plummeting from the wall, authorities reported that there had been a 162% increase in fatal falls over the past three years.
Hospital care on the US side for those who have suffered falls or other injuries at the border is significant. According to the New York Times, the cost of treating migrants at San Diego’s two trauma centers has increased from $11 million between 2016 and 2019 to $72 million from 2020 to June 2022.
The issue has prompted immigration officials to urge migrants to find alternate paths into the US.
“Cross the border illegally is inherently dangerous,” customs officials said in a statement. “CBP urges migrants to seek lawful pathways into the United States and not place their lives in the hands of human smugglers, whose priority is profit.”
Former President Donald Trump, who commissioned the 30-foot barriers to replace an existing 18-foot version along parts of the border in 2019, once deemed the wall “impassable.”
Joe Biden scoffed at the wall upon moving into the White House and said not another foot of it would be built during his administration. However, he has since done an about-face as the crisis at the border has become untenable for the administration.
Earlier this year, Biden caved and allocated $950 million to repair and fill gaps in the border wall, including commissioning a new stretch of barrier in Texas.