The situation was this: A woman called her family in Mexico, saying she was feeling ill, and the group of people she was crossing the Arizona desert with were talking about leaving her behind because they feared Border Patrol was near.
The June heat had arrived. Temperatures were forecast to top 110 degrees.
A group of volunteers drove up from Tucson on a Friday night, June 12, and searched the desert near Interstate 8 for hours, guided by geographic coordinates from the phone of the woman they were looking for, and triangulating photos of mountains in the background.
Photo taken by a volunteer for No More Deaths shows the area near Vekol Valley in Maricopa County, where volunteers searched for three days to find a woman from Mexico whose family reported her missing. The volunteer group found her body on Sunday, June 14.
That search ended after sunset with no luck. The group returned Saturday, again meeting futility.
On Sunday morning, after three more hours of searching, the group found the woman, Maria Fernanda Guzman.
Her body was lying in the shade of a tree in a desert wash.
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Volunteers from Amigos al Rescate and No More Deaths called the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Then they waited alongside Guzman’s body.
“We had to stay out there to not leave her alone,” said Bryce Peterson, one of the searchers.
The death of Guzman was one of thousands that have taken place in the Arizona desert since 2000.
The Pima County Medical Examiner, which tracks such deaths, has tallied 38 so far in the southern Arizona county this year. In 2025, there were 101 migrant deaths. In 2023, there were 197, according to the department’s website.
Guzman’s death made news partly because of the location. She had made it into Maricopa County, which doesn’t routinely see migrant deaths. Her case merited a news release.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the woman's name, though it gave it as Maria Guzman with no middle name. It said she was found by a group that locates missing persons, though it would not verify the names of the two groups. The department, in a previous news release, said the body was found by “hikers.”
Peterson, who has volunteered with No More Deaths since 2022, said border deaths have become routine, with little outcry for individual cases.
“It seems like people have gotten really jaded about these sorts of things,” he said.
No More Deaths has traditionally left water in the desert in blue barrels, as well as worked to find migrants who have fallen along the trail.
Peterson said he had been in touch with Guzman’s family in Mexico. The family did not return a request through him for an interview.
Peterson said he did not wish to reveal why the woman was crossing the desert. But he said, despite reports from federal authorities of traffic along the border plummeting under the second term of President Donald Trump, people persist in crossing.
Peterson said he can tell the flows by the level of water in the barrels left in the desert. “People are drinking the water,” he said.
The 26-year-old woman called her family on June 10, reporting that she was not feeling well and she thought the group she was walking with would leave her behind, the sheriff’s office said.
Peterson, who spoke with the family, provided more detail.
Guzman told her family the group was resting under a tree. Another person in the group gave the family more details about where the group was, including a description of an abandoned house.
“It sounded like a rush decision,” Peterson said. The man said the group was being chased and had to run, leaving the woman behind, Peterson said.
Volunteer searchers found the woman’s body on the morning of June 14. Peterson said he estimated she had been dead for a few days.
That same day, No More Deaths received word about two brothers who were missing. One had been apprehended by immigration authorities, Peterson said, while the other was reported missing and out in the desert.
