Hundreds of immigrants make it into America and make a life for themselves within the borders of the land of the free, but there are also hundreds of immigrants who are never able to cross the border. Instead, they pass out from exhaustion, thirst and hunger. These immigrants typically pass away on the sands of the desert while on their way to one of the less populated and more rural parts of the U.S. Mexican border. While some portions of the border are covered with security cameras and patrols, other sections of the border are only blocked by fences. Large stretches of desert have no patrols at all.

Unfortunately, the locations where the patrols are lessened there is a graveyard of thousands of determined immigrants who couldn't handle the harsh temperatures and lack of water. According to Fox News, the harsh desert conditions of Mexico near the southern border of the United States have claimed thousands of lives in the past years.

While this situation is not commonly publicized, some believe that the U.S. Border Control is partially to blame. With thousands of Border Control agents, hundreds of miles of fencing and cameras, aircraft, and sensors, it has become much harder for immigrants to cross the border into America. Now, many smugglers chose to guide immigrants through remote deserts instead, and force them to walk for weeks in extreme weather conditions with only bottled water and canned tuna for sustenance.

Every year, hundreds of bodies are found near the border. Oftentimes it is impossible to identify them because the immigrants travel without any identification on their person. Border agents claim to conduct more than 1,000 rescues each year. Humanitarian groups are appalled by the numbers of deaths in these deserts, and have recently started setting up water stations along commonly trekked routes in order to preserve the lives of some travelers. Fox News reports that in the last 15 years, at least 5,513 immigrants have been found dead along the border of the U.S, and Mexico. In 2012 alone, 463 corpses were picked up along the 1,954-mile border.

The most dangerous location and the most common site for immigrant deaths is the Tucson sector, which has accounted for more migrant deaths than any other Border Patrol sector in the past 12 years. Last year alone, there were 177 bodies picked up in this sector. Also in 2102, the Texas Rio Grande Valley was the death place for at least 150 individuals. In 2011, only 66 people were killed in this location. In Texas, migrants tend to try and cross the Rio Grande and catch a ride north. They then hike through the ranches in Brooks County in order to avoid a highway checkpoint. Because there are not medical examiners in this county, most migrants that are discovered are not identified and are instead buried in unnamed graves at a local cemetery.

Pima County in Arizona is another popular crossing spot for illegal immigrants, and the authorities there say that they have been dealing with the difficult case of identifying bodies for immigrants for years. The Pima County Forensic Science Center holds the dossiers of 700 corpses that were discovered in or near the county. Most of the bodies were beyond identification because they had been in the desert for a significant amount of time. Those that did have identification often had false IDs. Immigration can be difficult, even if you have managed to cross the border into the United States and are now residing in the nation. Hire an immigration attorney near you if you want help achieving a legal status or are about to be deported and don't want all of your hard work making it into the country to go to waste.