Abigail Arredondo of the Border Network for Human Rights works to remove a memorial cross from the fence which runs along the U.S.-Mexico border, Wednesday, November 5, 2008, in El Paso, Texas. (photo: Victor Calzada/AP)
Border
Postmortem: What Dead Migrants Tell Us
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
06 May 16
For
the nameless man whose remains were found in the Arizona desert, death was
merely the final ordeal in a life full of misery.
Analysis
of the man’s skeleton showed pitting of the skull, strongly pointing to
childhood malnutrition. A trauma had deformed one arm, and untreated cavities
speckled his mouth.
After
death, his luck turned: his skeleton fell under the care of members of the
small cadre of anthropologists and other experts who apply the tools of science
to undocumented immigration.
Using
DNA testing, bone measurements and other techniques, these researchers work to
pin names on the anonymous thousands who have perished on their way to the
United States. Some of the researchers also hope to foster understanding of
would-be immigrants, an ambitious goal when huge crowds cheer a presidential
candidate with staunchly anti-immigration views.
“The
narrative you hear on TV is not necessarily reality,” says Jared Beatrice of
The College of New Jersey, who has analyzed skeletons of undocumented migrants
in Arizona. “People are … desperate to escape poor living conditions. And we
can see that in the remains.”
Since
2001, staff in Pima County, Ariz., alone, have studied the remains of more than
2,300 confirmed or suspected border crossers, says Bruce Anderson of the
county’s Office of the Medical Examiner. A similar number of remains was
recovered in Texas over the same time period, according to Border Patrol
statistics. The cause of death for about half can't be determined, and most of
the rest died of heat or cold.
Many
migrants are found with false IDs or none at all, so scientists often rely on
DNA to identify aged remains. The man with the deformed arm, for instance, was
successfully identified via DNA and his remains returned to his home country.
Scientists decline to reveal more details to protect his family’s privacy.
Data
from the remains also yield surprising findings about those who risk their
lives to reach the United States. Migrants found in Texas are distinct from
those found in Arizona, says Kate Spradley of Texas State University: Those found
in Texas are “more similar to Americans.”
Some
of the Texas migrants had fancy dental work, such as bridges and high-quality
fillings. Those studied by researchers were generally free from severe cases of
bone deformities tied to childhood malnutrition.
Their
remains suggest they’re “fleeing violence,” Spradley says, not “extreme
poverty.” That’s in keeping with the origins of Texas migrants, who tend to
come from Central America, where several countries suffer from high murder
rates.
A very
different picture emerges of suspected migrants found further west. When
Beatrice and his colleague Angela Soler, now of New York City’s Office of Chief
Medical Examiner, studied the remains of 200 people found in Pima County, they
found rates of bone deformity that were “kind of unbelievable,” Beatrice says.
The
researchers found the presumed migrants had suffered from childhood
malnutrition and other ills at proportions seen in medieval times. “We
shouldn’t be seeing this in a modern group of people,” Beatrice says. Unlike
the Texas migrants, the Arizona dead whose identities are learned come mostly
from Mexico.
Researchers
are now working on new techniques to pinpoint the origin of anonymous bones.
Preliminary analysis shows, for example, that Mexican migrants’ bones have
lower levels of aluminum, found in deodorant, than the bones of a comparison
sample of New Yorkers, says Baylor University’s Lori Baker. The New Yorkers
also had higher bone levels of a metal used to line cans.
Even
groups aiming to cut legal immigration say that campaigns to identify the dead
are the right thing to do. But “the best way to avoid people dying in the
desert is to deter them from ever putting themselves at risk in the first
place,” says Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, via
email. Instead, current policy “is actually encouraging people to risk their
lives.”
Hostility
to the identification efforts themselves can run high. Spradley has been told,
for example, that this isn’t America’s problem and skeletons should just be
sent home.
The
obstacle is that “we don’t know where home is,” she says. “ These individuals
have families who are actively searching for them. … If that happened to me, I
would want someone doing the same thing.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
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