Border Patrol Is Caging Migrants Outdoors During Deadly Arizona Heatwave

The U.S. Border Patrol is holding migrants in an outdoor pen in a deadly stretch of the Arizona desert amid a record-setting heatwave, photos taken by The Intercept reveal.

On Thursday afternoon, The Intercept observed roughly 50 migrants confined in a chain-link pen at the Ajo Border Patrol station, a highly remote outpost two hours west of Tucson. From a ridge overlooking the Border Patrol’s facility, the migrants could be seen gathered under a carport-like structure, crowding themselves into a single, narrow strip of shade to escape the desert sun. The only furniture available was a short stack of metal bleachers baking in the extreme heat.

Just one day earlier, Tucson set a new record with 11 consecutive days of temperatures exceeding 111 degrees. The unincorporated community of Ajo and surrounding areas have been even hotter, with Thursday’s high hitting 114 degrees.

“The U.S. Border Patrol has surged personnel and transportation resources in recent weeks to respond to a significant increase in encounters near Ajo, AZ — some of the hottest, most isolated, and dangerous area of the southwest border — where individuals have been callously sent by smuggling organizations to walk for miles, often with little or no water,” a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, said in a statement to The Intercept Friday night.

The Border Patrol “is prioritizing expeditiously transporting noncitizens encountered in this desert environment, which is particularly dangerous during current weather conditions, to USBP facilities where individuals can receive medical care, food, water,” the statement continued.

CBP did not answer several specific questions from The Intercept, including how long people are being kept outside in the heat, whether children are among those who have been kept outside, and whether anyone held outside has required emergency medical care. The agency did, however, reiterate its standard practice to provide medical screening for migrants upon arrival to the Ajo station and said that migrants held outside are provided with a large canopy, large fans, hot meals, water, and bathrooms.

No such canopy was visible during The Intercept’s observation of the Ajo station on Thursday.

Roughly 50 migrants stand caged in an outdoor pen in the record breaking heat at the Ajo Border Patrol Station in Why, Ariz., on July 20, 2023.

“We are absolutely horrified at learning about how people are being treated at the border wall and the Ajo border patrol station — it is inhumane. This is abject mismanagement of a situation that could have been predicted, and should have been planned for,” Morgan Riffle, a volunteer with the Phoenix branch of No More Deaths and the Ajo Samaritans, two groups that provide humanitarian aid in the Sonoran Desert, said in a statement to The Intercept. “The lack of resources equates to neglect and is at the point of extreme physical endangerment and abuse.”

“We hear from other involved humanitarian aid groups that many agents on the ground want the resources to adequately take care of folks,” Riffle added, “yet it seems that upper management is failing to address the situation to the point of indifference.”

The Border Patrol station in Ajo can process a few hundred people a day, and on Monday upward of 800 to 1,000 people turned themselves in at the border wall, said a second humanitarian volunteer, who asked not to be named and has spent weeks providing aid at the border wall south of Ajo. “If you have a better idea what they should do, bring it,” he said, referring to the Border Patrol. “They’re out of buses. They’re out of equipment. I can imagine they would put people out in the parking lot if they have to. I don’t know they had a choice.”

Migrants sit near portable toilets within an outdoor cage at the Ajo Border Patrol Station as temperatures across Arizona break heatwave records, with Phoenix seeing 19 consecutive days over 110. In Ajo, the temperature reached 114 degrees while migrants were detained.

The southwest is currently experiencing what the National Weather Service has described as “a dangerous, long-lived, and record-breaking heat wave.” In recent days, much of Southern Arizona, including the Ajo area, has been under an “excessive heat warning,” putting everyone at significantly increased risk for heat-related illnesses. The NWS recommends that people in the area stay in air-conditioned rooms and take extra precautions when spending time outdoors.

On Wednesday, officials in Maricopa County, north of Ajo, reported that at least 18 people have died from heat in Phoenix this year, with 69 other cases under investigation.

In the desert to the south, the extreme heat makes an already deadly landscape all the more the lethal. On Friday, Humane Borders, a nonprofit group that provides water for migrants crossing the desert and works with the Office of the Pima County Medical Examiner to map migrant deaths, reported the recovery of 13 sets of human remains on the border in the past month, including four people who had died within a day of their discovery.

Over the past two and a half decades, the medical examiner’s office in Tucson has logged more than 4,000 migrant deaths in Southern Arizona — a figure that border researchers widely agree is an undercount. The rugged terrain surrounding the Ajo Border Patrol station, known as Arizona’s West Desert, is notorious for being the state’s most lethal region. In response to the recent arrivals and the surging heat, Humane Borders has set up aid stations near the border wall south of Ajo but the group — along with the Border Patrol — has been struggling to meet the demand, said the volunteer who has been providing aid there.

“They cross between 1 and 3 in the morning, a majority, and the Border Patrol is in a race to get them out of there before it gets hot,” the volunteer said. The optics of migrants being held in pens are terrible, but the alternative is “pulling dead bodies out of the desert,” he said. “That’s what I did last weekend.”

Temperatures reached at least 114 degrees on July 20, 2023, in Ajo, Ariz., as migrants continue to be kept in an outdoor detention facility with one visible fan running and four portable toilets.

The Intercept observed conditions at the Ajo facility for more than an hour as the temperature hovered around 108 degrees. During that time, Border Patrol agents lined up approximately 30 men and marched them to another area of the facility, leaving roughly as many people behind. Those people were still standing in the heat when The Intercept left the scene. Large floodlights above the enclosure suggested it was also being used for overnight detention.

Though most of the detained migrants appeared to be men, the ages and genders of everyone inside the pen were impossible to determine at a distance. Few, if any, of the people had hats or other sun-protective clothing. Most wore T-shirts; some were shirtless. At least one large fan and misting machine were visible at the enclosure’s edge, but both were positioned in full sunlight and directed toward the metal bleachers. Scores of empty plastic water bottles littered the ground. At one point, a vulture circled overhead.

Update: July 22, 2023
This article was updated to include a statement from CBP that was provided after publication.