Mexico City ? Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission will print and distribute at least 70,000 maps showing immigrants the safest routes to cross the border into Arizona, officials said Tuesday.

The project, which immediately drew fire from groups organized against illegal immigration, seeks to reduce the number of people who die trying to cross 50 miles of Sonora desert to reach highways in southern Arizona, according to Humane Borders, the Tucson, Ariz.-based humanitarian group that created the maps.

Steel barriers and stepped-up border patrols in California over the past decade have pushed immigrant smuggling routes east to more sparsely populated stretches of the Arizona border. Summer temperatures there routinely surpass 100 degrees.

The new maps will show spots where people have died – presumably discouraging some prospective migrants – as well as main roads, rescue beacons and the locations of water stations maintained by Humane Borders, a U.S. organization that offers aid to immigrants.