In a border graveyard, volunteers exhume migrants’ bodies and search for their families
In Maverick County, 26 bodies pulled from the Rio Grande were buried, some without attempts to identify them. Teams of Texas State students are trying to learn their names so their families can be notified.
BY URIEL J. GARCÍA JAN. 24, 20236 HOURS AGO
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EAGLE PASS — Victoria Soto stood at the bottom of a grave earlier this month and carefully scratched dirt from the edges of a body bag, then scooped it into a bucket held by Amelia Konda, a Texas State University classmate. Behind them, two other students used a dustpan to loosen the dirt around another body bag.
With the sunrise painting the sky orange, the forensic anthropology students lifted three soil-covered body bags and carried them to a nearby tent. When Soto and classmate Stephanie Baker unzipped one of the body bags, the body was unrecognizable and produced a sulfur smell that they’d grown used to during days of exhuming the bodies of migrants in this border city.
Soto and Baker gently examined the body, looking for clues to the man’s identity: clothing, an ID card, tattoos, distinctive dental work.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/24/texas-migrant-bodies-exhumed-eagle-pass-identify/
