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New Perspectives

Reflections
A person in PPE kneeling on the ground with buckets, plungers, and a plastic tub
Processing Personal Effects

Words cannot describe how immensely grateful I am to have had the opportunity to go to Texas this year.  I met so many wonderful people at Texas State University, Missing in Harris County Day, and Falfurrias that I will never forget.  The experiences I’ve had on this trip have helped me gain new perspectives and have greatly increased my knowledge on this human rights issue.

Two team members going over paperwork in a lab
Skeletal Analysis

At Texas State University, I was exposed to other aspects of  the human identification process.  In addition to conducting skeletal analyses, I learned a lot about forensic odontology with Dr. Fancher, processing human remains, washing the clothes of the deceased, and taking photographs of the clothes.  All of these experiences have broadened my understanding of the human identification process, and I am very thankful that so many people were willing to share their methodologies with me in addition to improving my skeletal analysis skills.

Missing in Harris County Day was my first experience directly working with the families of the missing.  While I contributed mostly by compiling data from intake forms and documents, I was still able to interact with those who are directly affected by this humanitarian endeavor.  I hope that our work will positively impact them by finding their missing family members.

In Falfurrias I was really excited to be able to help and work with people who are in the thick of this issue.  It’s hard for me to imagine constantly working on border crosser issues and border crosser deaths after such a short immersion.  But the individuals we met there are incredibly passionate and inspiring.  Helping Sister Pam make T-shirt bags for the families at the Respite Center and Eddie with the water stations were just a few small ways in which we could help, but I’m grateful we got the opportunity to do so.

Three people around a blue barrel with a red cross flag flying in the sky
Water Stations

Before going to Texas, I had heard so many stories and tried to understand the complexities of the issues surrounding migrant death.  By being in Texas, I realized how much more complex the issues really are and how many people there are working on all kinds of facets of this matter.  Leaving Texas, I still feel like I can’t fully understand the difficulties faced there in such a short amount of time, but I do have a greater appreciation for what everyone I have met is doing to help resolve this issue.

Two girls wearing coon hats
At the Alamo

I am also very thankful to have gotten to work with this team.  We not only achieved the goal of 15 cases in a week, but exceeded it by completing 17 skeletal analyses.  This group of people are hardworking, dedicated, and passionate about helping in any way they can, and they all truly inspire me every day.  We had a lot of fun moments in addition to the work we did, including visiting the Alamo, creating the blog videos, hanging out at the hotel pool, and all the inside jokes that were made along the way.  I’m happy I got to work alongside this team, and I hope to be able to continue helping in the future.

–Helen

Homeward Bound

Reflections
Three people sitting on a floor
Passing time at the airport

Our 11 days in Texas flew by quickly. It seems like we were just packing our bags to go and now we are already heading home. While our time there was short I feel like we accomplished a lot and made the most of our time. I am very proud of our UIndy team and, as always, inspired by our friends in Texas that work towards positive change on a daily basis.

Luggage sitting on a tarmac
I hope that’s not our luggage left forgotten on the tarmac

We started our time at Texas State University assisting members of Operation Identification with skeletal analyses.  While there, teams from UIndy and Texas State University completed forensic anthropological analyses on 17 individuals.  Next we drove to Houston to participate in Missing in Harris County Day. While there we worked with volunteers from a variety of organizations to collect missing persons reports and educate the community regarding the processes of exhumation and identification.  We spent the last leg of our trip in Falfurrias. We helped sister Pam make cloth bags for the Sacred Heart Humanitarian Respite Center, assisted the Forensic Border Colaition in mapping cemeteries in two counties and helped Eddie at the South Texas Human Rights Center to build, repair and fill water stations. If we were able to help just one person with our actions than we were successful.

But our work is not over. We have case reports to complete, case files to manage and plans to make, to name just a few tasks. We will continue to post daily blogs over the next week or so as we reflect upon our most recent trip to Texas. Thank you for reading and please feel free to share to bring awareness to this crisis on our border.

~KEL

Helping Families Find Their Loved Ones: Long Term Cases

Community, Human Rights, Migrant Death

Out of all topics I planned on covering this blog-year, I believe this topic is probably covered the most, mainly because Team UIndy’s expertise lies in exactly this category: long term cases. However, in the past, long term cases have mostly been discussed on the unidentified persons side. This includes the exhumation process and the anthropological analysis. So, for this post, I will focus on the missing persons side of long term cases

What is a long term case? For us at the South Texas Human Rights Center, we don’t have a particularly clear definition, but a long term case can usually be defined as a case that we’ve exhausted all possible resources to find a family’s loved one. This means that we’ve evaluated the circumstances of the disappearance and have called hospitals, detention centers, Border Patrol, etc. (all only with the family’s permission) with no luck.

In these cases, we do everything we can to keep the case actively investigated. First, we conduct a full interview that covers everything we can possibly think of regarding the person who went missing and how they went missing. Our form is around ten pages long and takes about an hour to fill out. We want the family to know that any and all information is extremely important and can ultimately can lead to finding their loved one. We ask for dental records, medical records, and any other potentially identifying information. With the family’s permission, we can file a law enforcement missing persons report and enter the case into NamUs (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System), which is an online database that allows the public to search among missing persons and unidentified persons cases in order to try and find matches. If applicable, we will send the case to other organizations to see if they can do anything to help. Finally, we try and collect a Family Reference Sample, which is a DNA sample that can be compared to DNA samples collected from unidentified human remains.

Missing in Harris County Day was an excellent example of all of our efforts to assist families wrapped into a single day. And while Team UIndy discussed the day in previous posts, I want to highlight some of the key successes of the day:

– We helped ten families through the entire process. Full interviews were conducted, cases were put in NamUs, DNA samples were collected, and ultimately families were provided with resources to help them find their missing loved one. Completing all of these processes is extremely difficult for so many reasons, and rarely happens. But on Saturday, we completed these processes for ten families. That is INCREDIBLE.

– We were able to help families whose loved ones were missing, not from the US, but from other countries. This is nearly an impossible feat. But thanks to the presence of the EAAF (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team), these families could be helped.

– We were able to provide families with explanations about the entire process by allowing families to interact with experts. Again, because of the complexities of the process, families are usually left with more questions than answers after an interview or after a DNA collection. But with everyone together in one room, families could have many questions answered.

These long term cases are extremely difficult in so many different ways. And through this process, I’ve come to hold one position in higher respect than any other position I’ve witnessed: the interviewer. I am extremely thankful for the volunteers who listened to families as they told heartbreaking stories, offering condolences and an open heart to any family who needed it. These volunteers truly and honestly put the families before everything else. Some go as far as to give families their personal phone numbers to allow families to call whenever they need someone to listen. These volunteers were present at Missing in Harris County Day, and are a continual source of inspiration and hope during this crisis. I know I’ve said before that no position is more important than another, but I have to briefly disagree as I reflect on the fact that for these volunteers, helping a family ALWAYS comes first.

Ryan