Category Archives: Human Rights, Migrant Death

Talking about the project itself

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

General, Human Rights, Migrant Death, Reflections

As I prepare to return to Brooks County for a 14th year of volunteer humanitarian forensic science in the Texas borderlands I find myself pausing as I write. I’ve never been short on words as this work is deeply meaningful to me both in the practical purpose we serve and in the educational opportunities it provides to students. Our main goal is to assist in identification efforts for individuals who have perished while crossing our southern border. I believe strongly that everyone deserves the dignity in death of a name.  What started as a one year trip has now lasted 14 years demonstrating the extent of the need for forensic specialists at our southern border. In regards to educational experiences, my goal is to provide students with an experience that elicits empathy and understanding in a way that no book could ever do.  I began this work thinking we would quickly be irrelevant in this context because I was hopeful things would change. Whether that be a change in policy, a change in funding or a change in perspective. I fear my loss of words is because I’ve said much of this before and nothing has changed.

Team members search in the brush

My daughter is obsessed with the Wicked movies. My first introduction to them is recent, even though I know the story has been around for a awhile. I grew up with the Wizard of Oz. We would look forward to the time it was played once a year on tv, and it would be an event in our household. We would cheer for Glenda the good witch and for all the bad things that happened to the wicked witches of the east and west. We knew the wizard would end up being a fraud, but Glinda was good and the other witches were not. Wicked really challenged my childhood beliefs and showed me that the popular narrative is not always the truth. The man behind the curtain has more power in controlling the story than I originally thought. The truth is often a much more complicated web of rights, wrongs, goods and evils all woven together to form the fabric of the person or issue at hand. The fibers glisten with meaning based on motivation and perspective. To further complicate things, what is considered right and good by one is considered wrong and evil by another. This is the story of the border. Everyone in the US has thoughts and opinions about the border, but the more time you spend there the more you realize it is not that simple. That is why the issues remain.

Team members searching in the brush

This year the Beyond Borders Team will work with our colleagues from Remote Wildlands Search and Recovery. We will also be joined by South Texas Mounted Search and Rescue and UIndy alum Dr. Reed McKinney, DDS (a dentistry practitioner in Fort Sam Houston, TX). We will be revisiting areas where partial human skeletal remains were recovered with the hopes of locating more of the individuals that can be returned to their families. We will also be searching new areas that have GPS coordinates of missing persons in the hope of locating them. It’s physically demanding and emotionally heavy work. We have a wonderful group of people coming together for the same goal: to find those that have gone missing, provide them with a name and return them to their families.

We invite you to check in each day to follow our work. Thank you for your support!
~KEL

The Work That Stays With You

Community, Human Rights, Migrant Death, Reflections

As I prepare to return to Falfurrias, TX for a second year, I am eager to once again be part of the Beyond Borders project. Experiential learning is a central component of the Human Biology Master’s Program at the University of Indianapolis (UIndy), and Beyond Borders exemplifies what it means to learn through meaningful and real-world engagement.

While the project’s primary goal is to assist in the search for and identification of undocumented migrants who have gone missing while attempting to cross into the United States, it also offers profound opportunities for personal growth among everyone involved. Working alongside students and colleagues in this setting reinforces the importance of teamwork, trust, and shared responsibility. It is remarkable how much learning (both personal and professional) can occur in just a few days.

I am humbled by the dedication that Dr. Krista Latham has poured into this humanitarian effort since its inception. Over the past 14 years, she has thoughtfully shaped an experience that encourages self-reflection, collaboration, and empathy. One of the most meaningful parts of each day is the evening debrief, when the team comes together to reflect on what we have learned, what we have done well, and where we can improve. These conversations deepen our understanding of the work and of one another, fostering the sense of community that is so essential to Beyond Borders.

One moment from the field that has stayed with me is the realization of just how physically and emotionally demanding this work is. Last year, I wrongly assumed I would have “spare time” to edit upcoming course syllabi, which was quickly proven wrong. In such a short amount of time, it can feel as though we make only a small dent. Yet Beyond Borders is not defined solely by what can be accomplished in the field. As an educator at the University of Indianapolis, I see this project as an extension of the classroom, which challenges students to confront firsthand the realities of forensic anthropology, ethical responsibility, and humanitarian work. These experiences impact how this generation of students think, learn, and approach their future careers in ways that traditional coursework cannot do alone.

As I return for a second year, I look forward to continuing assisting, strengthening relationships with students and colleagues, and carrying the lessons learned in Texas back into the classroom and beyond. Returning brings a different perspective which is shaped by experience, humility, and a deeper understanding of the emotional and logistical realities of this work.

–AE

Approaching the Texas Borderlands with Intentionality

Community, General, Human Rights, Migrant Death, Reflections

“But progress isn’t just about stopping bad things from happening. It’s about creating the conditions for new things to happen—things that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, would never even have been imagined.” — Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

As I am preparing to leave for Texas, surrounded by family and friends for the holidays, I have been thinking a lot about the individuals and communities we will encounter in Falfurrias. With the goal of our mission being to provide humanitarian forensic aid, I have thought extensively about those who have died while en route to the United States and what they may have experienced while traversing remote ranchlands and grueling terrain. However, more recently, I have found myself thinking about the other moments of these individuals’ lives; the moments before they were lost to this humanitarian crisis.

When encountering unidentified migrant remains in the Texas Borderlands, we are only encountering one juncture of the individual’s life—their death. Although we can hypothesize about a person’s life from their remains, there is a lot about an individual’s story that is lost when they die clandestinely, especially if they remain unidentified. Thus, we may never fully understand the circumstances that drove an individual to migrate, the loved ones they had to leave behind, or the fear they may have felt when making the perilous journey across the US-Mexico border. How can we prevent these individuals from going unidentified and their stories forgotten? These are just two of the questions I hope to investigate firsthand through our work in Texas.

Although my previous research has provided me with significant insight into the sociopolitical variables that have shaped this humanitarian crisis across the southern US border, my research took a more analytical approach, investigating the forensic response to this crisis. While I engaged with content that explored the migrant experience, it was often limited to individuals’ journeys crossing the border and came exclusively from secondary sources. Thus, while the primary objective of our trip is to assist in the search and recovery of unidentified and missing migrants, I have also set a personal goal of gathering as much information as possible about the experiences of both local community members and missing migrants, in life and in death.

I have chosen this goal because, recently, it feels as if the humanitarian crisis occurring at our southern border is becoming an increasingly normalized and more peripheral topic. With location and socially constructed barriers distancing many of us from the deaths occurring along the US-Mexico border, it can be difficult to recognize the efforts made to dehumanize migrants, especially when they have existed for our entire lives. However, I believe that when reminded of the similarities between us and those we distance ourselves from through language and politics, we realize that, despite these barriers existing in real ways, they are not inherent and can be challenged.

I hope our work can help remind people that those who are lost while traversing the Texas Borderlands are people with lives, families, and dreams—not just statistics. While our forensic efforts can help achieve this objective by assisting in the identification of migrant remains, I hope to personally contribute to this goal by preserving the memories of those we encounter—both living and deceased—and taking their stories/lessons with me. I feel that, equipped with these stories, I will be able to confront dehumanizing and criminalizing rhetoric I encounter post-Texas and realistically challenge the sociocultural barriers that seek to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ and thus the unnecessary deaths occurring at the southern US border. As Paul Murray suggested in The Bee Sting, perhaps sharing these individuals’ stories and our own personal experiences in this liminal space will create the “conditions for new things to happen—things that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, would never even have been imagined.” It is when we begin having these conversations and becoming more comfortable discussing the harsh realities of this humanitarian crisis that progress can occur.

Peytin