A Colombian migrant’s family is seeking answers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection after the married father-of-three died last month after crossing the United States-Mexico border and suffering a fatal fall.
Juan Rivera, 37, was found dead February 24 next to a steel border fence he had reportedly climbed after paying a smuggler $800 to ferry him into the U.S. before he abandoned him in along the border line outside Arizona.
Border agents assigned to U.S. Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector encountered 19 migrants in San Luis and the group notified them of the possibility that another migrant may have died south of where they were stopped.
An agent canvassed the area and found Rivera’s body between the primary and secondary border fences about 83 miles north of the United States-Mexico border.
Juan Rivera, of Bogotá, Colombia, was found dead next to a steel border fence in San Luis, Arizona, on February 24. The 37-year-old had left behind his wife and three children in Colombia and intended to turn himself over to the U.S. Border Patrol after hiring the services of a smuggler, whom was paid $800. Family members say the smuggler left Rivera at the Mexican side of the border in Mexicali and told him to walk across the desert where he would meet other migrants who were headed to the U.S.
Juan Rivera (right) with his wife, Karen Sánchez (left), and their three children
San Luis (Arizona) Police Department lieutenant Marco Santana explained to Univision that Rivera scaled a wall that served as the international barrier between Mexico and the United States before proceeding to climb over the second wall – which he ultimately fell off.
‘There is no other information that will shows that it was any other way than a fall in which he hit himself and ultimately lost his life,’ Santana said.
Family members told Colombian news outlets that Rivera decided to migrate to the United States and was looking to settle in San Jose, California.
The Bogotá native was working in his father’s butcher shop, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic he was barely making enough money to support his wife Karen Sánchez and their three children, aged 3, 6 and 10.
He borrowed money to buy a car to use for his new job a rideshare app driver in 2021, but was fell behind on payments to cover the car loan and barely managed to cover the home expenses.
Juan Rivera (pictured with his wife and chidlren) was struggling economically due to the COVID-19 pandemic and quit his job at his father’s butcher shop in Colombia. He purchased a car and used it on a local rideshare app, but still was having a tough to cover the loan payment for the vehicle and the expenses at home. He eventually sold the car and used the money to buy plane tickets to travel to Mexico and meet a smuggler, who for $800 would cross him into the U.S.
Blood stain remained at the site where Juan Rivera’s body was located by a U.S. Border Patrol agent from the Yuma Sector moments after other agents had encountered 19 migrants, who told them that they there was another migrant who had possibly died in front of the fence
After watching online migration videos with his brother John Escudero in February, Rivera decided to give it a try and cross the border with the intention of voluntarily turning himself in to the border patrol.
He sold the car to cover the smuggler-assisted cross-border trek and boarded a flight for Mexico City on February 21 and then headed over to Cancún.
On February 23, Rivera was on a flight to Mexicali, the capital of Baja California that also borders with southern California.
He met the smuggler but texted his brother because he was having second thoughts about the migrant trafficker.
‘In one of the voice not, at 8:20 p.m, mi brother was telling me that the person was very weird,’ John Rivera told El Tiempo. ‘I tried to calm him, told him it was normal because they could run into the Mexican police.’
Juan Rivera messaged his brother later that night to inform him that the smuggler had left him in a remote border area and instructed him to walk about 984 feet where he would meet a group of United States-bound migrants.
Rivera proceeded to walk through the desert and reached out to his wife to let her know that his phone battery was running low.
Colombian migrant Juan Rivera was found dead in front of a border fence in Arizona on February 24
The family did not hear of Rivera’s whereabout until 48 hours later, when the Colombian consulate office in Los Angeles via email that he had died.
His loved ones are now questioning his death, recalling that Rivera told them he only had to climb over one short border fence in order to cross into the United States.
Further doubts were raised, they say, when they were asked for permission to cremate his body. The Colombian government has stepped forward to help repatriate Rivera’s remains.
‘We do not know what happened. They tell us that he fell when he was jumping the Mexicali wall,’ John Rivera told Colombian online media outlet QHubo. ‘But we doubt this version because at the point where he was going to (climb), according to the plan he had, it is not high, there was no way to die like that. As we have not been able to see his body and they wanted us to authorize him to be cremated there, this planted more doubts in us.’
According to border data collected by the International Organization for Migration, at least 650 migrants died at the border in 2021.
More 200 individuals were reported dead along the Arizona border region alone in 2021, according to Humane Borders and the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.
