With rise in border migrant deaths, forensic volunteers and students work to identify remains
Operation Identification (Operation ID) uses volunteers and students to help do forensic work as border counties see a rise in migrant deaths in areas "that have never experienced this before."
Amerika Garcia Grewal is a lifelong resident of Eagle Pass, Texas, and a volunteer with Operation Identification, a project that works to identify the bodies of migrants discovered along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The hope is to notify loved ones in their home countries and when possible, repatriate the remains.
“The body keeps the score,” Grewal said, as she explained her work, which includes removing clothing “to look for any identifying marks,” including tattoos.
Amerika Garcia Grewal, an Operation ID volunteer.Maddie McDonagh / NBC NewsOperation ID was formed at Texas State University in 2013 and uses both students and volunteers to aid border counties that have found themselves with a backlog of bodies.
Remains of migrants who might die from exposure or by drowning in the Rio Grande are often buried in county cemeteries or in the case of Maverick County, sometimes stored in a mobile morgue. The refrigerated trailer was originally used during the pandemic to hold the overflow of Covid victims.
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