Texas heat-wave deaths hit two-decade high in 2022 amid extreme temperatures

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Heat-related deaths in Texas last year hit a new high this century amid a surge in migrant deaths and a sharp rise in temperatures exacerbated by climate change, according to a 1999 Texas Tribune analysis of state data.

Texas had its second hottest summer on record in 2022 during the state’s worst drought in more than a decade, according to data provided by state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon. Climate change has increased the risk of extreme temperatures across Texas, causing higher overall temperatures and summer heat waves that start earlier in the spring and last longer in the fall, making people more likely to experience heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

There were at least 214 heat-related deaths in the first nine months of 2022 alone, the highest annual total for the state since 1999, according to the Texas Department of Health.

This figure included 93 residents who died, many of whom were homeless Texans and people without air conditioning. In Tarrant County, for example, about 70% of people who died from the heat were homeless or didn’t have a working air conditioner, according to the county’s medical examiner’s report, which includes deaths in the first nine months of 2022. The expert’s office declined to comment.

But more than half of the heat-related deaths in Texas last year, 121, were “non-residents.” Last year was the third year in a row that heat-related non-resident deaths outnumbered Texas residents.

According to DSHS, non-residents can mean residents from another state or country. But the fact that counties on or near the Texas-Mexico border, including Webb County and Brooks County, have led the state in heat-related deaths since 1999 suggests it was mostly migrants who died of causes. associated with heat when crossing the border. borders.

Migration experts, human rights activists and local officials say the data reflects what they see on the ground. They attribute heat-related deaths to border control policies, which they say are forcing migrants away from their preferred checkpoints in urban areas towards increasingly remote and dangerous routes. They added that Section 42, a public health emergency order issued in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic that is used to expel migrants quickly without allowing them to claim asylum, also increases the number of migrants crossing the border.

At the same time, the danger of crossing the border was exacerbated by extreme heat, which included dozens of triple-digit days last summer.

“We are seeing a human rights crisis happening along the border,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights. “These deaths are politically driven.”

As the number of migrants detained at the border continues to set records, the number of migrant deaths has also hit a new high, with US Border Patrol reporting the discovery of 853 bodies along the entire US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, which ended September 10, 2022. 30 is a number that includes deaths from heat, drowning, and other causes. That’s more than three times the number recorded in fiscal year 2020, and the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, called the southwest border “the deadliest land crossing in the world.”

Texas also often has the highest number of reported migrant deaths among the four states bordering the US-Mexico border, which also includes New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

“I’m seeing a dramatic increase in border crossing deaths compared to other years,” Webb County Medical Examiner Corrine Stern, who serves 11 counties in South Texas, told KENS 5 in August. At the time, Stern said her office had the bodies of 260 migrants, and for the first time in her 20-year career, no more bodies were being accepted.

Stern turned down recent Tribune requests for an interview, citing the sheer volume of cases she handled.

The number of heat-related deaths reported by the state in these border counties is also likely grossly underestimated, experts say, as some migrants who die after crossing the border never recover or their bodies are found too late to determine the cause of death. And not all heat-related deaths are attributed to hyperthermia—overexposure to natural heat—as the underlying cause.

For example, 53 migrants from Mexico and Central America were found dead on a hot June day in a stuffy truck in San Antonio after being abandoned by a smuggler. But DSHS recorded fewer than 10 heat-related deaths in Bexar County in the first nine months of 2022, meaning few, if any, of those migrants were reflected in the agency’s data on hyperthermia deaths.

DSHS declined to give the migrants’ exact cause of death, but survivors of the tractor-trailer were later treated in hospitals for heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Sylvia Dee, a climatologist at Rice University, said that climate change is “shifting the whole temperature distribution higher.” As a result, Texas is more likely than in the past to exceed dangerous heat levels.

“People shouldn’t be outside at this temperature at all,” Dee said.

Some experts have also pointed out that extreme weather events caused by climate change are one of the reasons why people choose to migrate.

“We constantly hear from migrant farmers that the land is not what it used to be, that they cannot plan and cannot harvest. [in their home country] more,” said Luz Maria Garchini, an assistant professor at Rice University who researches the trauma and health of immigrant communities.

And as global temperatures continue to rise, climate migration is likely to become even more widespread, scientists warn. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2022 report, extreme weather events could displace 143 million people worldwide over the next 30 years.

About 70 miles north of the border in Brooks County is one of the busiest Border Patrol checkpoints in Texas on US 281. To avoid this, migrants walk miles through the ranch, but many are ill-prepared to pass through the thorns . And travel becomes even more dangerous with rising temperatures and humidity.

“Most of the deaths happen on the ranch,” said Brooks County Judge Eric Ramos. – Due to the distance from the border by that time [migrants] get to us, they are really exhausted. So with the heat, the thickness of the brush just becomes overwhelming.”

Brooks County, home to about 7,000 people, has recorded at least 202 heat-related deaths since 1999, according to DSHS data, the second highest among Texas’s 254 counties.

But that would probably still be a significant understatement. A 2020 report co-authored by Stephanie Leuthert, a migration policy expert at the University of Texas at Austin, found that between 2012 and 2019, Brooks County had a total of at least 535 reported migrant deaths. Leuthert said that a large number of these deaths were likely heat-related, but may not have been considered heat-related deaths because their cause of death could not be determined. Some, she said, can also be assigned a separate cause of death, such as dehydration, which is often aggravated by heat but can also occur in cold weather.

Ramos said the number of bodies forced Brooks County to build a second mortuary to hold 40 bodies. He added that the county may soon hire more staff to help rescue migrants or, if necessary, find and identify the bodies of those who died in the crossing.

“It will only get worse,” Ramos said.

Eddie Canales, founder of the South Texas Advocacy Center in Brooks County, said his organization is also trying to expand its crisis response capabilities.

Since 2013, his organization has installed about 150 water stations in and around Brooks County, leaving water in large blue buckets that hold several gallons each. He and his volunteers go out weekly to replenish water supplies.

“Water is water,” Canales said by phone as he replenished his organization’s water stations in January. “People sweat and they walk for miles.”

The center also operates a hotline for people looking for loved ones who have gone missing while crossing the border, and assists local authorities with rescue operations and the identification of dead migrants, which Ramos said could require a significant portion of the Brooks County budget – one of The poorest counties in Texas.

“Everyone deserves a dignified death after death,” Canales said.

Ultimately, experts, lawyers and local officials said the country needed to move beyond containment-based border control policies to stop the wave of migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border. For example, Ramos believes the federal government should reform the immigration system to give migrants more legal ways to work and eventually become US citizens.

“Climate change is definitely killing these people,” he said. “But the inability of our legislators in Washington to do their job is also devastating.”

This report was supported by the Stable Center for Investigative Reporting at Columbia University.

Disclosure: Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin provided financial support to The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial sponsors play no role in Tribune journalism. Find their full list here.