Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee, spends most mornings providing aid to migrants awaiting immigration processing near the U.S-Mexico border wall near San Ysidro.
Rios said he’s seen countless injuries since the barrier wall between the U.S. and Mexico was raised from 18 feet to 30 feet in 2019. He says migrants also attempt to use makeshift ladders to climb over.
“Some of those injuries might be cuts or lacerations because of the concertina wire. Their injuries are bruised parts of their bodies because they have struck that part of their body against a wall or broken limbs because they have fallen from the border wall,” he said.
Local trauma centers have linked the wall scaling to an increase in migrant-related injuries.
In 2022, UC San Diego Health published research on severe injuries at the U.S.-Mexico border wall in southern San Diego. They showed a five-fold increase, from 42 cases in 2019 to 440 cases in 2022.
“It is continuing to trend upward. You know, it's still quite a significant increase,” said Joseph Ciacci, a neurosurgeon at UC San Diego Health.
He said it has definitely put a strain on the capacity of the trauma center.
“It is a crisis. There are limited resources. There are limited hospital beds, there are limited providers, there are limited funds,” he said.
Scripps Mercy Hospital has treated over 251 cases this year, although the numbers have been slowly decreasing since February.
Rios said a slight decrease is expected.
“Typically, we see a reduction in the number of people during the summer months because it's so hot,” he said.
From January to May 2024, Border Patrol agents encountered nearly 384,000 people.
“Last week, a 46-year-old female fell from the border wall trying to cross through the Otay Mountain wilderness. She sustained serious injuries during the fall and was unable to move. Luckily, our agents were able to respond to her location and get her the help she critically needed,” said border patrol agent Jeffrey Stalnaker at a recent press conference.
Between May and December or 2023, San Diego Fire-Rescue received approximately 3,500 medical calls from the border area west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Rios says that despite the expectation that increasing the wall height would deter people from crossing the border, it has only created a new health issue.
“Greater numbers of people are arriving with life altering injuries that we should really be considering the construction of border walls as a public health crisis,” he said.
