2 men shot, wounded by smugglers near Sasabe, Ariz.

Border Patrol agents working in the remote desert west of Sasabe, Ariz., found two men with gunshot wounds received in Mexico, officials said.

While detaining a group of seven people on Dec. 19, U.S. border agents discovered a 22-year-old man shot in each of his upper thighs. Another man, 42, was shot in the ankle by “rival smugglers,” officials with BP’s Tucson Sector said Monday.

It remains unclear why the men were shot, however smuggling organizations in the area have been known to abuse and murder
people.

In 2013, Border Patrol agents discovered a Mexican man who had crawled across the border after his throat had been cut.
Mexican officials later found three others with slashed throats—two of
whom were dead. Last winter, cartel activity—including widespread violence in Sasabe, Sonora— drove
hundreds of Mexicans north, while migrants are pushed to the remote
desert by smuggling organizations.

This year, one migrant was killed and eight wounded when
gunman opened fire on their vehicle in Tubutama, a village about 47
miles south of Sasabe, the Associated Press reported.

Tucked in a valley full of rolling hills and cattle ranches, Sasabe has around 50 residents and a small border crossing to its sister town to the south. During the Trump administration migrant families began arriving in the
remote desert near Sasabe, including one group of nearly 200 who crossed
in Nov. 2019. 

However, despite a massive construction effort to build a
30-foot high border wall along the southern edges of the protected
Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, the area has become a major
crossing spot for migrants. Some cross at the end of the wall more than a dozen miles to the east, while others crawl
beneath the steel panels, or enter through holes cut by smugglers using
battery-powered tools.

Just days before Christmas 2023, migrants from Mexico,
Guatemala, Haiti, and Lebanon, as well as Chad and Cameroon, endured
freezing rain and waited for hours before they were evacuated by
volunteers. In the coming months, more migrants arrived in the region and volunteers expanded their efforts in the area, establishing a handful of camps with supplies and tarps.

By
February and late-July, small groups of men from Nepal and India, as
well as families from Mexico, crossed into the rugged desert.

In mid-June, two Border Patrol vehicles collided along the border
road, injuring one agent and four migrants. The agent was airlifted by
helicopter to Banner University Medical Center, the Border Chronicle
reported.

In August, a 60-year-old man waited for nearly 24 hours after he
plummeted from the border wall before members of the Arivaca Volunteer
Fire Department evacuated him by cutting through a nearby welded-shut gate.

While apprehension figures have declined precipitously after President Joe Biden issued a proclamation in June limiting access to asylum for most migrants if they cross illegally into the U.S., small numbers of people continue to forge through the desert east of Sasabe, about 60 miles southwest of Tucson.

Troy Miller, the outgoing of head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection—Border Patrol’s parent agency—said on Dec. 19 that following the Biden administration’s move “there has been a continued, meaningful decrease in unlawful border crossings. From May to November, encounters dropped 60 percent to their lowest level since 2020.

Last week, humanitarian volunteers with the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans helped a small group of stranded migrants near Sasabe, as well as “a young man” who broke his arm and injured his knee after he fell in an arroyo at night. In a post on Facebook, volunteers said they found him on the road near Arivaca, Ariz., “waving and asking for help.  He had not eaten or had water to drink in four days.”

Volunteers also found a group of girls from India who said they “had been walking for more than six months, and both had been beaten severely” as they they traveled through Mexico.  One girl had a broken hand, and the other had injured her back and knee.