A full accounting of drownings in the Rio Grande, by people migrating, has never been documented. No agency in the U.S. or Mexico is comprehensively counting these deaths. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does maintain a database, but a 2022 Government Accountability Office report showed it undercounts by failing to record all incidents as required by law. In Mexico, there’s no comprehensive program to track these drowning deaths, either at the local, state or federal level.
Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with The Washington Post and El Universal in Mexico, set out to build the first ever comprehensive binational database of migrant drowning deaths in the Rio Grande. The binational team filed more than 160 public information requests with authorities in the U.S. and Mexico, collecting disparate coroner and law enforcement data. We also examined whether Texas’ Operation Lone Star, which began in 2021, and has deployed thousands of police and soldiers to the riverbanks, as well as constructed miles of razor wire, floating buoy barriers and other barriers at the river, was contributing to an increase in drownings through illegal pushbacks (police and soldiers verbally or physically forcing asylum seekers back into the river) as people crossed to request asylum.
Through this data-driven, and OSINT investigation the team uncovered 1,107 migrant drownings in the Rio Grande from 2017 to 2023, greatly surpassing official counts. By systematically compiling death records from agencies in Mexico and the United States, alongside extensive on-the-ground reporting, the project built an unprecedented dataset.
Focusing on Texas’ Operation Lone Star – which ushered in the fast-tracked militarization of the border – the investigation highlighted migrants’ fatal risks under intensified enforcement through a visual map of Operation Lone Star border barriers and clusters of drowning deaths. It also exposed critical gaps in government data, underscoring the urgent need for accountability and transparency.
While the data alone was insufficient to establish whether Operation Lone Star caused more deaths, experts said militarization on both sides of the border had pushed some people to cross in more remote and dangerous parts of the river.
In Mexico, El Universal documented and mapped the number of soldiers along the river now engaged in immigration enforcement, which may also contribute to more drowning deaths.
Our data on drownings also revealed the changing demographic of those dying in the Rio Grande as more families with children attempted to cross. In 2023 about one in five drowning victims was a woman and one in ten a child. More people from nationalities other than Mexican were also increasingly dying in the river.
