♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Brooks County represents the epicenter of the migrant death crisis in South Texas.

♪ There's a couple of contributing factors.

One, of course, is the inland border patrol checkpoint.

And you're 70 miles north of the border by the time you're Falfurrias.

But there's a very large border patrol checkpoint and individuals who don't want to try the risk of being smuggled through that in a car, they're dropped off by coyotes and they're told to just simply circumvent the checkpoint, walk around it.

But the terrain down there is extremely harsh.

The temperatures can be just absolutely, you know, literally deadly.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ - Labor does not have the mobility that goods and capital has.

You have all these free trade agreements.

Why can you not, you know, in these trade agreements establish the fact that labor should have mobility?

We're serving criminal elements by forcing people to be smuggled in.

And who benefits from that smuggling?

Cartels, smugglers.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today we're going to go back out here in this kind of a low lying area, which is kind of a creek bed, a dry creek bed.

And this is kind of where we're going to filter through that and go see if we can find any remains out here today.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - It's a pretty vicious environment out here, it's real hot, super humid.

This is one of the few places that I know of that it's actually hotter in the shade than it is out in the sun.

We could be in the shade and it'll be 120 degrees with the humidity, and you step out and it's always 110 with the breeze.

Feels like it almost sucks the water out of you.

Not to mention the environment, there's rattlesnakes, there's blue indigos out here, coyotes and wild boar.

So lot of dangers.

If the environment doesn't get you, the heat will.

I think Don said he pulls about 60 to 80 bodies a year, out of this county.

So that's why we're here.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ - Well, their body position pretty much dictates what they were doing.

If you find them still articulated, still altogether, then their body position is going to tell them what was going in the last few moments of their life.

You find them under trees, under a bush, they're trying to get into the shade, they're trying to get shelter, they're trying to protect themselves from the sun.

Sometimes we find them they're just face down in an opening area like this where it looks like they were just walking along and just down they went, they just, they went to the fullest extent that their body could go.

There was one guy, obviously somebody came along behind him and they dropped him in a tree, propped him up in a tree.

To me, somebody had to do that.

I don't think he stumbled up to it and wrapped his own arms around the tree limbs.

He may have done that to simply say, I'm dying, they can find me this way.

- You know what?

We're going to call it the tibia, - Oh, that's been out here for a long time.

Oh yeah.

Super bleached.

- A little young as they're being chewed up and the micro fracturing doesn't start for they say a year sometimes.

- It has been chewed by a rat?

At the bottom or the marrow, yeah.

- This has been in the dirt because it's still nice and smooth, so it's been protected from the weather.

The growth rate is fuzed.

So it's over 18, 19 years old, when it fuzes.

- We found a rat mound, we excavated the rat mound.

That was where the first bone was recovered.

We continued on 200 feet away, we found part of the sacrum.

We started doing a circular search and from that point we came across the femur inside a cactus.

It took us an hour to basically wreck the cactus.

Recovered that-- inside the cactus was another rat mound and inside that rat mound after I destroyed it, was a cell phone and a photo I.D.

and some of the hip bones.

So positive I.D., the body will be going back to its home.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - All right.

We're going to we're going to go ahead and get started.

We said 12:15 and I think we're a few minutes ahead.

So everybody ready?

[indiscernible] with the South Texas Human Rights Center.

Migrant deaths continues to be an issue that is unaddressed on a national basis sufficiently.

So I'm going to turn it over to the people that are responsible for doing this exhumation.

- I'm going to talk to you just a little bit about the exhumation process that's happening at the cemetery.

It's really the first step in the identification process.

This is a very long journey that the individuals are going on and exhumation is just one small part of that journey.

Essentially, there are three major areas in the cemetery where there were unidentified migrant aerials.

This is the third time that forensic anthropologists have been to the cemetery to conduct those exhumations.

We recovered approximately 120 burials of unidentified migrants.

- We submit a DNA sample from all of the skeletal remains that we analyzed to the University of North Texas, and that gets the DNA into a federally run DNA database known as CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System.

This wasn't done in the past when these individuals who are buried in the cemetery, when they were found, DNA samples weren't necessarily taken, so they were buried without a chance at identification, which is why we're conducting these exhumations in the first place so we can try and get a DNA sample for identification purposes.

- What would you all ultimately like to see happen so that you don't depend on you to get things done the proper way?

- I would like to see the state recognize this as a mass disaster situation, and I think the state needs to pay for these exhumations and for the analysis of these.

- Anybody else?

- Remains are scattered all over this county.

Bodies are scattered all over this county.

You know, people come through here and they check, this is the checkpoint right here, and they try to get around the checkpoint and be picked up in various locations up in here, even into the other counties.

How we're going to retrieve all these remains and bodies for identification purposes and for DNA remains to be-- is something that we have to address and figure out.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Well, I'm here at Falfurrias today to cover the exhumations at the West Texas State.

All these bodies were being taken to this funeral home.

Funeral home was, you know, they were taking shortcuts, just burying them and not even using body bags, you know, some of them into sacks and plastic bags and not, you know, taking the required documentation and keeping the required records.

So Rafael Hernandez from The Killers in the theater, is-- the rescue team out of San Diego was down here for a call, for a rescue.

And he, you know, once he recovered the body, he follows through, goes to a funeral home and talks to some of the directors and finds out that this is going on.

So he's kind of the one that got the ball rolling on this and was able to expose the, you know, just the human rights violations that were happening down here and in some sense, you know, continue having.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So Rafael Hernandez gave me a call sometime in September and said that a family had called him after they received a call from a coyote that was smuggling this 45 year old woman.

They said that she started hallucinating and had passed out and wasn't able to get back up.

So, you know, that could be a lot of things.

And so we didn't really know at the time.

So he gave me the phone number of the family because I had been on rescues before with Rafael.

And there's not a lot of contacts that he has down here, so he calls me up, I call up everybody that I knew, law enforcement, everyone, the sheriff's office, Border Patrol, DPS, local law enforcement, asked them-- gave them the same directions that I had received to send them a photo of the woman and asked them, you know, if they could go out and look.

So I followed up about six days later and found out that no one had actually done anything or gone and looked for her.

So a coworker and I are in the office and I told him I was going to go out and check and he says, "No, we'll-- I'll follow you.” So we were walking through the brush and the first whiff I got, I recognized that smell because of the rescues I had been with Rafael before and we kind of smelled our way to her.

We found her within 20 minutes of me first smelling her.

We found her in the brush about 500 yards from the main highway.

Yes, so she was bitten by a snake.

And that's why she ended so close to the river too, she must have gotten bit early on and the poison spread.

And also, we were able to-- I mean even though she was burned up from the sun, we were able to still see, you know, the clothes she was wearing and they were able to easily identify because the animals didn't really consume her.

But a lot of the times you've got days before the coyotes get to you, vultures, you know, they eat you.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Hold the badgers and as you step on it, multiple people stepped on it.

And so you break pieces come off.

You can see it's flat.

So everybody basically just trampling on the same thing over and over.

If you position yourself over here, you can see the road where they're going.

- So what-- following this path, once I came out on the higher elevation, they use landmarks.

So you got the windmill up ahead, which is exactly due north at where we're standing and the path actually travels in a serpentine manner but it's heading straight to that windmill.

So perfect landmarks.

When you're in the middle of the woods, you don't have a compass and just a general sense of direction, landmarks are the best thing you can do, and a manmade one is the best also, so that windmill is the top.

(engine running) (engine running) (engine running) (engine running) (engine running) (engine running) (engine running) (engine running) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Once we bring a set of remains into the lab, we will clean them and process them.

We're lucky enough here at Texas State to have a team of volunteers, graduate students and undergrads who dedicate hours and hours each week to just by hand, carefully cleaning the bones of any remaining soft tissue or any decomposition so that we can get the skeleton cleaned and to a point where we can study it in the lab.

Simultaneously once we are processing and cleaning remains, we're also then processing and cleaning any personal effects found at the remains.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We have a particular case where funeral homes can be coming and picking up the set of remains, which is a good step forward in the case.

But it's been a long time coming.

This individual happens to be a female from El Salvador.

And when she was found, she was found with an identification card that happened to be a fake identification card indicating that she was from Mexico.

She was completely skeletal.

There was no identifiable features left, but her set of remains was taken to a funeral home and based on the fact that there was an identification card found with skeletal remains, the funeral home issued a death certificate with the name from the identification card.

So she was kind of identified, but under a false identity.

Then she was interred in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Brooks County, Texas.

Later exhumed and through DNA analysis, we were able to identify her as a missing individual from El Salvador.

Luckily, finally, a year and a half later, after getting that DNA association and making an identification, we're finally able to send her home.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - We have to change the political climate in this country in terms of how it perceives immigrants and the contributions of immigrants in this society.

I mean, we say we're a nation of immigrants, you know, but is it just white immigrants?

I consider every lost body, every lost person out here a tragedy.

It shouldn't be.

I believe this country has a more compassionate perspective and that can create a fair, humane and just immigration policy.

(music playing) - I'm lucky enough to have been born into a situation where, you know, I don't have to fear for my life from gang violence.

I don't have to fear for where my next meal is coming from or for, you know, whether I'll have a roof over my head.

But when it comes to providing for your family, would not any of us make a decision that is, you know, carries with it the risk of potential death to try and find a way to lift their family out of that sort of situation?

I think most people would.

When you can make an identification and you can help return someone to their loved ones, to their family, and give that family a sense of knowing and allow them to lay their loved one to rest in a manner that they choose, you realize that it's worth doing.

These are human beings and until we have some sort of comprehensive immigration reform in this country, I think we will continue to see deaths along the US-Mexico border.

And sadly, I think that means, you know, no, there is no end in sight for this line of work.

(music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪