Death at the Border: Danger Stalks Aguilas Volunteers in the Desert Jean Guerrero - KPBS Fronteras
go to original December 17, 2016

Death At The Border: Part Three (KPBS News)

A dusty human skull, a spine attached to leg bones clothed in pants, and an arm bone pose a mystery: do these belong to Marco Antonio Garcia, a 20-year-old missing Mexican migrant?

Gregory Hess, Pima County’s chief medical examiner, knows this probably person died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border through the Arizona desert. A group of volunteers called Aguilas del Desierto, or Eagles of the Desert, found the remains about 10 miles north of the border during a search for Garcia.

The group — plumbers, construction workers and farmers who search for dead or dying migrants at the U.S-Mexico border — believed they had found the young man.

Since 2001, Hess’s office has analyzed the remains of more than 2,600 border crossers. About 900 remain unidentified. Fragmented skeletons like these are among the most difficult to identify.

Inside the pant pockets, to his surprise, Hess finds a cell phone with a SIM card, which yields the name of a Guatemalan man, Wilman Arrivai Vicente Perez. It appears the Aguilas were wrong.

Hess sends a bone sample to Tucson’s Guatemalan consulate, which located the Arrivai family and is awaiting a reference DNA sample. The Aguilas return to the desert. I follow.

Editor's note: This is the third of a four-part series. Here's part one and here's part two.

Read the rest at KPBS Frontera

Related: How to Learn if Unidentified Remains Belong to Your Relative (ColibriCenter)

Related: Border Patrol Undercounts Deaths of Migrants in Arizona (Los Angeles Times)

Related: Migrant Deaths Worldwide Top 7,100 in 2016: International Organization for Migration (Observer Online)

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