Students, volunteers help fingerprint migrant remains with hopes of identifying them

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MAVERICK COUNTY, Texas (Border Report) -- An eyelash curler, a wooden cross, a Mexican passport, limes, bags of peanuts and chips, and garlic to ward off snakes were among items in a black backpack that was found with the remains of a deceased migrant woman Thursday on the South Texas border near Eagle Pass.

Also inside the backpack, located by law enforcement, was a blanket with photos of a man and woman matching that of the 41-year-old woman in the passport from the western Mexican state of Jalisco.

Nearby, volunteers who were training with Texas State University's Operation Identification program watched as the hands of the female were put into scalding water to get viable, plump fingerprints to send to a national database in the hopes of positively identifying her remains and repatriating her back to family.

"Fingerprints are the fastest way to identify. And the fastest way to repatriation," Dr. Kate Spradley, director of Operation Identification and a professor of anthropology at Texas State University, told Border Report.

"There are a lot of deaths here in Eagle Pass. Many of them are unidentified when they're found and they don't have any circumstantial information with them. So we have come here to fingerprint those individuals," Spradley said.

The forensic anthropologists from Texas State set up two tents for two days last week outside a mobile morgue overflowing with unidentified bodies recovered along the border in Maverick County. Border Report was allowed on-site as they documented the remains.

This is the second time in a month the team has come to try to identify the bodies in the makeshift trailer morgue. They worked on identifying 11 bodies on this trip and made two positive identifications on the first day.

And it's the second time that volunteers from the community have come to help them and learn skills they can perform later, once this group returns to the university in San Marcos.

"They're going to work with the funeral home to take prints if nobody else is around to take fingerprints and that is huge," Spradley says. "That's amazing!"

The dozen anthropology students work quickly, efficiently, and with respect for the bodies, taking breaks only to sip water and change medical gowns and gloves covered in matter and bodily fluids. The volunteers watch them and learn with masks on tight as the smell of death and mold from the mobile morgue permeates the air.

They carefully photograph every item found with victims on one table. This includes bandanas, underwear, food in backpacks, and muddy shoes, often found with felt on the bottom so as not to leave footprints when they cross the border into the United States.

The work is grueling and tough and Spradley says they are grateful for the handful of volunteers affiliated with the Eagle Pass Border Vigil Coalition who have come in the pre-dawn hours both days to train and help the team.

On one table, a trio of students measure sections of a body, looking for scars and tattoos, gathering DNA and collecting as much information as possible to enter into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NAMUS).

They also work closely with the FBI, Spradley says, and other officials, like consulates from foreign countries and nonprofits that work with families in other countries who are trying to locate loved ones who headed north to the border and were never heard from again.

Over 50 bodies have been stored in the morgue in the past month. And it seems as fast as they can remove and catalog one body, another one comes in. Eleven unidentified bodies were sent back from the Webb County Medical Examiner's Office since their last trip. The Webb County medical examiner, which is 140 miles away in Laredo, is the closest medical examiner to Maverick County. But they don't have space for any more bodies, officials say.

"Maverick County is experiencing right now the most number of deaths in the Texas borderlands," said Courtney Coffey Siegert, a post-doctor scholar who is a team leader for Operation Identification.

There is so much in this mobile morgue that Siegert tells Border Report they even studied a bag thought to be human remains that turned out to be "rotten sweet potatoes."

Law enforcement and other officials tell Border Report they need more hands and that these volunteers are essential.

"This is incredibly important. Some of the bodies that are here in Maverick County are people who died four years ago," said Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-founder of the Border Vigil Coalition, who arrived before 5 a.m. to help on Thursday.

"That's four years of families not knowing what happened to their loved ones. That's four years of unanswered questions. So it means a lot to us to be able to come in and be able to volunteer, perform these services and help bring some closure to these families," Garcia Grewal said.

She has assisted during both recent visits by the Operation Identification team and she has been touting the organization and trying to enlist more volunteers.

"I won't ask them to do anything that I won't do," she told Border Report.

Volunteer Dennis Williams, 71, has worked for over four decades in forensics.

He drove five hours from Georgetown, Texas, and came to help after seeing a recent Border Report story on the project.

"The thing that was the most touching was the humanitarian effort that was going into wanting to put a specific ID with those bodies who were reclaimed," Williams says.

He complimented the thorough inventory of every item the team documents. He even marveled at how they can get masking tape unspooled while wearing thick surgical gloves.

"It's been enlightening and that's probably an understatement," he said. "I'll definitely be back to help."

The work is tough.

Garcia Grewal admits to throwing up a couple of times and becoming overwhelmed by the stench and macabre scene. But she says it's important.

"This is something incredibly important so that families know, definitively, scientifically what happened to their loved ones," she said.

For the past few years, Maverick County has steadily seen an uptick in unidentified bodies found in the remote borderlands of this stretch of South Texas, as migrants continue to risk their lives trying to cross the thick Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, Mexico.

Now with asylum applications only being taken by legal U.S. ports of entry, and only by scheduling via the CBP One app, she says many migrants get desperate waiting for months at a time south of the border for an appointment, and they make the dangerous decision to cross.

"In the work that I've done with the Border Vigil and Operation ID everybody we've ever identified has been someone in transit," Garcia Grewal said. "It's vitally important because families have been without answers for years."

Victoria Swenson was covered with sweat and visibly tired after eight hours working with the team on Thursday as temperatures hovered just below 90 degrees because of cloudy skies. Normally the group must stop working by 11 a.m. once temperatures exceed 90 degrees because of the effects heat has on the corpses. But Thursday they worked until 1 p.m.

"I love my job. I love that I can help people that have no voice left to say. And to bring them back to their families and that's what gets me up every day to know that I am helping a lost loved one get back to their families," Swenson said.

To volunteer or learn more about helping, email: BorderVigil@gmail.com or call (830) 294-8380. A signup sheet and information also can be found at the Eagle Pass Border Vigil Coalition's Facebook page.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.

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