For those who are really interested in the issue and want to have in depth knowledge of what is going on around unidentified immigrants found in the USA, this is a must read. The content is also reflecting what we all have concluded, looking at the entered Namus files.
There are hundreds who are not registered, unaccounted for, not found yet and families stay forever in limbo about what happened to their loved ones. Because of deportations a lot of people want to go back to the USA, which increases the amounts of people in risk of loosing their lives doing it.
A big problem are the numbers. If they are not accurate then that has many consequences. Let say there are just 300 counted by the border patrol, but there are in fact 1000. The resources will be based on 300, so it's impossible to get the work done.
Arizona (mostly initiated by Pima County's chief medical examiner Gregory Hess) does a lot for years already to count and register unidentified remains found and gather information about the deceased so much as possible. In Arizona, tribal police, county sheriffs, coroners, and volunteer search parties cooperate to give a much more accurate count than their counterparts.
Texas was/is a disaster. Because op the measures to prevent border crossings, the border crossings shifted to Texas. More and more people are trying to get into the USA through the Texas border with very dangerous circumstances. Lots of land directly on the border is private. Some landowners don't allow searches on their land. So there must be many more out there that are still not found. Often there were no accurate death count, no shipping of body's to the coroner/no coroner examinations, buried by "the bunch" in graves, without proper registration. Now there is this....
Congressman Gonzalez’s Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act Passes House. But the backlog is huge. There are also good examples, where the found deceased are handled conform the policy of the Pima County in Arizona, but there is no intensive cooperation between agency's en volunteer search parties.
(I tried an automatic translation in English, hope it works)
Part one
La Patrulla Fronteriza no contabilizó cientos de muertes de inmigrantes en suelo estadounidense | CNN
Part two
Para las familias de inmigrantes desaparecidos, los restos no identificados significan que nunca habrá respuestas | CNN
Some snippets:
Wiped off the face of the earth
The majority of those who die are young men from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador. But women and children also die on the way. Some are fleeing gang or cartel violence; others in search of employment or a better life. Increasingly, among them are those trying to find their way back to their families and friends in the United States after being deported.
"The need to return <to the USA, after deported> is enormous"
In the last year, the Immigration and Customs Service has increased its arrests of immigrants who have lived in the United States for years , even if they have no criminal record.
Then there are the more than 800,000 "dreamers" or "dreamers", brought here as children, who were protected from deportation under the Barack Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Three federal courts have forced the Trump administration to continue accepting DACA renewals . On May 2, Texas and six other states filed a lawsuit to try to terminate the program. With no legislative solution in sight, the young dreamers remain in legal limbo.
According to Robin Reineke, founder of the Colibrí Human Rights Center in Tucson, Arizona, "this is one of the most silent and invisible human rights catastrophes in the world today."
"Texas is a nightmare"
For the past five years, the Rio Grande Valley of Texas has overtaken Arizona as the busiest and most deadly crossing point from the south. The gap CNN was able to document between the Border Patrol's immigrant death toll and a more comprehensive count is smaller than in Arizona: 94 deaths in the past 15 years, leaving out the El Paso County deaths that the Border Patrol grouped with New Mexico.
But that is because in the state of Texas the deaths of many undocumented people who cross the border are not counted by anyone. "Texas is a nightmare" when it comes to recording immigrant deaths, said Daniel Martinez, a sociologist at the University of Arizona who studies unauthorized migration.
In other Texas border counties, which include some of the poorest in the country, local justices of the peace are responsible for identifying the remains. They are supposed to send them in for an autopsy by a coroner if necessary. But a CNN poll indicates that rarely happens.
Judges in six counties said they did not send all the bodies for autopsies because of the expense. Autopsies, during which DNA and other information are collected, can help identify whether the remains are from an undocumented immigrant.
Still, <Corinne> Stern <a coroner for Webb County, which covers 8,741 square kilometers around Laredo> said she was certain that many bodies are never shipped. That matches what CNN heard from judges in various counties who contract with Stern's office. They described immigrant deaths to CNN that they did not report to her, and that was not reflected in Stern's numbers.
She also notes: that her office - which serves 11 counties in the region - currently she manages to identify 75% of the migrant remains that they send him. "Nobody leaves here if we don't get a DNA sample first, unless we've already identified the remains by fingerprints or dental records." Her office also lets everyone know that the undocumented should not be afraid to show up.
ed to add.
