The disappearance of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother three weeks ago has inspired volunteers to launch their own searches in the dense desert near her home just outside Tucson.

For the first nine months of 2020, the Border Patrol listed 43 deaths in the Yuma and Tucson sectors that make up the Arizona border area. During the 2019 calendar year, the federal government listed 70 deaths in Arizona, while the mapping project counted 144. Federal statistics show that search and rescue operations near Arizona's border inexplicably dipped to 213 during a record-hot July and August, from 232 in July and August 2019. Still, some officials and activists working near the Arizona border believe wall construction could be sending migrants into riskier places. The Trump administration expects some 450 miles (725 kilometers) of border wall to be done by year’s end, much of it in Arizona.