All posts by strandr

The Usual Suspects Pt. 1

Snapshots

The Osteological Research and Processing Lab at Texas State has been bustling this week. Professors, students, and interns have been working on analyzing cases, processing backlog cases, cleaning personal effects, and ultimately working together to efficiently move the identification process forward. Several task forces have been formed, each with their own job. We thought we would spend a couple of posts featuring interviews with various members of this supergroup:

Texas State University graduate student Cassie
Cassie

Name: Cassie
Hometown: Lindale, TX
Current University: Working on her M.A. in Anthropology, Texas State University
Role This Week: Data collection/database management
What would you want for your last meal?: “Grilled chicken with mushrooms, onions, and cheese on top, a loaded sweet potato, green beans, mac and cheese from Kent Black’s BBQ, a roll with cinnamon butter from Texas Roadhouse, and unlimited sweet tea.”

Texas State University graduate student Courtney
Courtney Coffey Siegart

Name: Courtney Coffey Siegart
Hometown: Houston, TX
Current University: Working on her M.A. in Anthropology, Texas State University
Role This Week: Intake/processing of remains
If you could have any superpower, what would it be?: “The brains necessary to make anything I want so that I can do anything I want, so I can have any superpowers, like Iron Man.”

Binghamton University student undergraduate student Susan
Susan Sincurbox

Name: Susan Sincerbox
Hometown: Hammondsport, NY
Current University: Working on her B.S. in Anthropology, Binghamton University
Role This Week: Intake, processing, and photographing of personal effects found with remains
Who would you want to star as you in a movie about yourself?: “A young Elizabeth Taylor.”

Binghamton University Graduate student Amy
Amy Szen

Name: Amy Szen
Hometown: Buffalo, NY
Current University: Working on her M.A. in Anthropology, Binghamton University
Role This Week: Intake/processing of remains and personal effects found with remains
If you could be any animal, what would you be?: “A big dragon, like Drogon from Game of Thrones.”

Texas State University Graduate Student Chloe
Chloe McDaneld

Name: Chloe McDaneld
Hometown: Austin, TX
Current University: Working on her M.A. in Anthropolgoy, Texas State University
Role This Week: Graduate Assistant at ORPL
What song did you crank up in your car this morning?: “Anything on 93.3.”

Dr. Kate Spradley working on a laptop
Dr. Kate Spradley

Name: Dr. Kate Spradley
Hometown: Little Rock, Arkansas
Current University: FACTS faculty and Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Texas State University
Role This Week: Coordinating all task forces as well as analzying cases
If you could be in any band, what band would you be in?: “I’d be in Fugazi.”

Stay tuned for more interviews tomorrow!! 
Ryan

A Quick Tour of the STHRC

Community, Snapshots, Uncategorized

We’ve spent this week at the South Texas Human Rights Center (STHRC), and so I thought I would post a few pictures of what the center is like. The hub of all activity regarding this crisis in Falfurrias is situated in a tiny, yet cozy building right across the street from the Brooks County Courthouse. The main room contains a few desks with computers and papers, a central table and chairs, and is decorated by an assortment of posters, religious items, and colorful trinkets. Behind the main room is a small backroom that mainly contains water and donated supplies. Finally, the backdoor of the center leads to a small storage area containing buckets and poles used for making water stations.

Map of Brooks County with push pins labeled with numbers to identify where water stations are located
A map is used to keep track of all the water stations in Brooks County . Sister Pam makes sure all stations are checked, repaired and refilled every week.
Stacks of milk crates filled with jugs of water infront of a window in the South Texas Human Rights Center
Stacks of water jugs sit in the front of the room, waiting to be placed in the truck during a water station refilling run. Water is donated by multiple organizations and people around the community.
Colorful Decorations and posters on a mantle near a workstation in the South Texas Human Rights Center
The colorful center is incredibly decorated by various signs and posters that generally symbolize hope and respect for migrants and their families. Many of these posters have at one time been used to bring awareness to the humanitarian crisis. Others are donations.
Director of the South Texas Human Rights Center, Eddie, engaged in a discussion with Priscilla in front of a South Texas Human Rights Center poster in the center
Eddie and Priscilla discuss upcoming strategies. Priscilla, an intern from the University of Pittsburgh, is often busy making phone calls to families of the missing in hopes of obtaining as much information as possible that could aid in finding their loved one. Eddie, the director of the center, continually offers advice and support for interns and volunteers. His passion for the human rights center’s work is unrelenting.
Eddie and Sister Pam discuss as she sits infront of a computer in the STHRC
Eddie and Sister Pam discuss recent the good news of obtaining additional missing persons reports. Sister Pam works tirelessly, approaching the crisis from every direction possible. The only time she isn’t smiling is when she is concentrating very hard. Her smile brings a positive aura to the center that resonates as bright as the colorful decorations that don the walls.
Sister Pam with a drill showing Justin how to build flag poles for water stations
Sister Pam teaches Justin how to build flag poles used for water stations. No job scares Sister Pam. From climbing over ranch fences to repair water stations to carrying giant buckets, Sister Pam constantly leads and inspires those around her and working with her.
Stacks of water barrels, flagpoles, and barrel tops all organized in a storage area outdoors
Water buckets and DIY flag poles are stored behind the center. Sister Pam and the human rights center currently has around 70 water stations available around Brooks County for migrants to use if needed. Their goal is 100 as soon as possible.

This cozy center has been our home this past week, but can be home to anyone who would like to volunteer their time.

If you are interested in assisting the South Texas Human Rights Center, visit their website at http://southtexashumanrights.org/ and contact Eddie. I promise you will become inspired and proud in the process. The team at the STHRC is second to none, and has taught us new ways to engage and address this crisis. I am extremely thankful to have joined their team this week.

Ryan

“We got lucky with this one…”

Human Rights, Migrant Death, Snapshots

“Here’s the spreadsheet that has all the details for this year’s missing persons reports.”

Dates of last known contact, what clothing they were likely wearing, whether there was any history of dental work or surgeries, and other possibly identifying information filled cells of the spreadsheet. There was a lot of data, but question marks and blank cells for missing data easily stood out.  I wasn’t really sure how to process the data. Where do you start? How do you start looking for connections?

“Oh no, these are just the reports from the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office. We’ll get to the other counties and all of the other reports sent to us from other states in a minute.”

Hailey Duecker giving a presentation infront of a powerpoint depicting the Texas US border

Hailey Duecker, the forensic anthropology fellow at the South Texas Human Rights Center, pulled up a current missing persons case she was working on to walk me through the process of search and rescue/recovery that begins with a phone call from family or friends of the missing. This particular report was written entirely in Spanish.

“We got lucky with this one. Two separate organizations have information about this missing person, and so we have a lot of photos and a lot more information than we normally have about someone.” Hailey showed me the photos and explained how she inputs this data into a public database called NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. “If we’re really lucky, we’ll have a few possible matches with unidentified persons found here in Texas.”

It seemed simple enough. A family calls in, reports a loved one as missing, gives as much information as possible, promises to submit a reference sample for DNA comparisons, and the South Texas Human Rights Center makes sure the data can be compared with other cases. But what I learned today was that this ‘simple’ process actually takes months and months of painstaking organization, persistence and patience to complete. Multiple human rights organizations strive to collect as much information as possible to find the missing, which in spirit is incredible. At this point however, as Hailey is able to quickly show me, these intentions often lead to decentralization. This means that multiple missing persons reports often exist for the same individual, often with conflicting information. And when one missing person is assigned a different case number by each organization or agency, these multiple numbers can easily get mixed up, creating a tangled web of useful information.

While this sounds like a problem, I see this as an opportunity to learn and become immersed in each individual case, and I think Hailey does too. As I spend this week learning as much as I can from Hailey before transitioning into her position, I’m realizing our job is a tedious one as we condense and clean an extremely large dataset into something more suitable for making comparisons. Even after only a single day of working with her, we started to fill in the blanks on a few cases, make a few comparisons, and equally if not more importantly, make some exclusions. I felt both a sense of relief and urgency with each blank cell on that spreadsheet that we filled in.

“I think we can exclude this set of remains as belonging to this missing person because the remains were found a few days before the date that he was last seen. That’s really good news, really good news.” Hailey spoke with excitement and passion every time she talked about getting one tiny step closer towards an identification. “Look further down this spreadsheet here, you can see how some of these missing persons turned out to be people who were deported. They’re alive, and that’s always the best news.”

Dr. Latham eyed us looking over the spreadsheet, probably because Hailey was flying through the explanations with excitement. She definitely sensed my head spinning.

“What do you think Ryan, you think you can handle it?”

I definitely think I can. Today was an eye opener for me that this week of training is going to be an emotionally exhaustive experience that throws me out of my comfort zone. But that’s what this trip is about, and I’ve never felt more ready for this job than after today.

Ryan