'Yo Tengo Nombre' Online Database Helps Identify Migrants Who Died Crossing the Border Jen Reel - Texas Observer
go to original December 28, 2016

“I Have a Name/Yo Tengo Nombre” came out of our reporting on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in South Texas, where hundreds of migrants have died trying to get around an internal Border Patrol checkpoint 70 miles north of the border.

The series of stories we produced with The Guardian, “Beyond the Border,” brought attention to the horrors of the South Texas dying fields as well as the heavy burden borne by communities in South Texas that recover and bury the dead with little help from the state and federal governments. Unfortunately, the tragedy doesn’t end there.

Many of the migrants’ remains have been mishandled; some were buried in black trash bags in mass graves. Even when the deceased are properly handled by law enforcement and forensic scientists, identification is difficult because of how disorganized and decentralized local, state and federal authorities are.

DNA testing can confirm a person’s identity, but family members often don’t know what happened to their missing relatives. The result is that the remains of hundreds of people — someone’s father, mother, sister, brother, child — are sitting in cold storage anonymously.

Read the full story at Texas Observer

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