As the Trump administration continues an immigration crackdown at the border, asylum seekers are being told to wait for days or weeks on end before being allowed entry into the United States. This practice is leading more and more immigrants to risk their lives on dangerous journeys through the desert to enter the country instead, says investigative reporter John Carlos Frey.

We speak with the Marshall Project reporter about the Barry Goldwater bombing range in Arizona, a vast swath of land across the border from Nogales, Mexico. The area is part of an incredibly dangerous migrant path, but aid workers are not allowed access to the site. Frey estimates hundreds of immigrants could have died there in recent years but that their bodies have not been recovered.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: John Carlos Frey, can you talk about the Barry Goldwater bombing range?

JOHN CARLOS FREY: Sure. The Barry Goldwater bombing range is a 70-mile stretch of land, owned by the federal government, where the military, mostly the Air Force, performs military exercises and bombing runs, basically training pilots, for military exercises. It is a cordoned-off area of the southern Arizona desert. It happens to cross through very well-known migrant routes. Migrants who are coming through the desert on their way to the United States sometimes cross the Barry Goldwater bombing range. It’s almost impossible to get to a major highway, where migrants usually pick up their ride, without crossing this bombing range.

The bombing range is restricted from humanitarian assistance, because of, for obvious reasons, it’s a dangerous place. And so, individuals who care for migrants on their journey, by putting out water, by putting out food, or maybe even searching for lost migrants, are not allowed onto this stretch of land. I had been in contact with a search-and-rescue team over the past six months, and they have discovered over a dozen bodies on a very small section of the Barry Goldwater bombing range when they had permission to search in this general area. It is believed that there are hundreds, if not more, individual human remains still there on the bombing range, but the federal government is not allowing anybody on to search for these individuals. Migrants cross there on a regular basis. That has been proven. And these individuals believe, at least the search-and-rescue groups believe, that there are many, many more bodies there, and the federal government is barring that process……more here