As the end of the fiscal year approaches on September 30, U.S. Border Control statistics claimed that the death toll of migrants crossing the Arizona border had declined.  Border Patrol officials in Arizona stated that the Arizona Border Control Initiative launched in June was responsible for the lower death toll, quoted at 118 this week.  However, The Arizona Republic of Phoenix further reported that these remarkable numbers might not be wholly complete.  The discrepancy in numbers occurred when the Tucson sector changed its approach to calculating the numbers of migrant deaths.  Previously, the sector released numbers to the media and the official report to Washington headquarters that included the number of migrant’s skeletal remains found in the area, but now this additional number was left off the tally given to the media. 

Given this new method to account for migrant deaths, officials claimed that the Tucson sector death toll had come to a total of 118 deaths for the fiscal year, however with the 19 skeletal remains in the picture the death count would have surpassed last year’s numbers of 136 deaths.

Critics to the ABC Initiative criticized the government strategy, which spent over $23 million dollars adding 200 new agents, new equipment and technology such as helicopters and unmanned drones and even free plane tickets to illegal Mexican immigrants to the interior of Mexico.  President of Humane Borders, Rev. Robin Hoover, went on to advocate his suspicion of the effectiveness of the government border initiative, stating that “The public can’t rely on the Border Patrol to provide comprehensive date. Therefore, all of their program evaluations of their own effectiveness and efficiency are called into question.”  However, officials of Arizona Border Control defended the intentions of this week’s death toll announcement by recognizing the fact that the way the numbers were presented made the situation look more favorable than was true.  They continued by stating that they had no intention to mislead the public and had initiated an investigation into this occurrence.