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| Photo Credit: AP. |
IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT, Arizona (AP) — After strapping on knee-high snake guards and bowing his head to invoke God’s protection, Óscar Andrade marched off into a remote desert at dawn on a recent Sunday to look for a Honduran migrant. His family said he had gone missing in late July “between the two hills where the backpacks are.”
The
Tucson-based Pentecostal pastor bushwhacked for three hours in heat that rose
above 100 degrees (38 Celsius), detouring around a mountain lion, two
rattlesnakes and at least one scorpion before taking a short break to call the
aunt of another missing man. Andrade believed he found the young man’s skull
the previous day.
“Much
strength, my dear sister,” Andrade told her, while she repeated incredulously
that the “guide” had assured her he left the young man with injured feet but
alive. “Sometimes we don’t understand, but there is a reason that God allowed
this. And if you need anything, we’re here.”
On the
fourth search for that 25-year-old man from the Mexican state of Guerrero, the
pastor and his Capellanes del Desierto (Desert Chaplains) rescue and recovery
group had found his ID card in a wallet 40 feet (12 meters) away from a skull
and other bones, picked clean by animals and the relentless sun in the Tohono
O’odham Reservation.
Since March,
Andrade has received more than 400 calls from families in Mexico and Central
America whose relatives – sick, injured or exhausted – were left behind by
smugglers in the borderlands.
Forensic
experts estimate 80% of bodies in the desert are never found, identified or
recovered. But those that are, added to massive casualties like 53 migrants
trapped in an abandoned trailer in San Antonio, Texas, in June and nine
migrants swept away in the Rio Grande this month, point to one of the deadliest
seasons on record on the always dangerous southwest border.
Fragile
economies pummeled by the pandemic in Latin America, ruthless trafficking
networks that control virtually all illegal crossings, and shifting U.S. asylum
policies that affect migrants of different nationality and family status in
drastically different ways all contribute to the toll – as does the Southwest’s
extreme heat.
Andrade, his
group, and an Associated Press journalist accompanying them among towering
saguaro cacti quickly came across evidence of distress on this popular
smuggling route – abandoned backpacks, still full of clothes, coins and even
deodorant, and half-full water jugs, several days’ walk from the closest towns.
“To be out
in the desert is more difficult than to be in a church,” said the 44-year-old
pastor and father of three teens, who sometimes join him and his wife, Lupita,
on these missions. “Our commitment is firstly with God, and with the families.”
The group
didn’t find the missing 45-year-old Honduran, but planned to look again; it
usually takes several trips to locate remains in this desert.
It’s one of
the deadliest corridors, according to aid groups and the U.S. Border Patrol,
for migrants who, fearing being rejected under a pandemic provision called
Title 42, try to evade authorities instead of turning themselves in right after
crossing or applying for protection legally.
From staging
camps guarded by cartel scouts in areas where the border has no fencing or
bollard barriers, the migrants – usually men from Mexico and Central America –
walk north for more than a week. They have to cross dozens of miles of desert mountains
and dry washes before reaching major highways where smugglers’ vehicles will
take them to destinations across the United States.
“Once a
person told me, ‘How can I believe, look where my brother is, who always did
praise and worship,’” Andrade recalled during the recent search. “For God,
there are no mistakes. Yes, there are painful things, like the young man from
yesterday, who died because of some blisters.”
Faith often
motivates volunteer organizations providing aid along the border. The Capellanes,
who search for the missing at least once a week in this rough desert, pray with
the grieving families as they share updates and somber news.
Being a
Christian ministry also reassures families, many of whom are targeted by fake
ransom requests after they turn to social media looking for their missing
relative. The aunt of the young man from Guerrero, who asked the AP not to use
their names because his parents haven’t been told yet of Andrade’s discovery,
said she had been targeted repeatedly.
To bring the
comfort of God’s word is what motivated Elda Hawkins to be one of the first
volunteers to join Andrade’s group, she said at a recent church meeting. A
dozen members gathered in a small Tucson church to pray for the young man,
receive CPR credentials, and discuss a fundraising food drive.
“We can be a
light of hope, for those about to die or for their families,” Hawkins said.
Andrade’s
group doesn’t charge families for the searches, though some contribute to the
cost of gas for his truck ferrying the group down rough dirt roads to where
they set out on foot. It also works closely with law enforcement, notifying the
Border Patrol of every search and then local authorities if it finds human remains,
as it has nearly 50 times.
Even then,
the migrant’s body still has a long journey home. It takes time for authorities
to retrieve the remains, which are then subject to forensic analysis to
determine the cause of death. Often, that’s never established; in other cases,
the cause is listed as “environmental,” especially heat stroke and dehydration,
said Dr. Greg Hess, chief medical examiner for Pima County.
His office,
covering migrant deaths also in two adjacent border counties in southern
Arizona, received 30 migrant bodies found in July alone, about half of them
dead less than three weeks, said Mike Kreyche of Humane Borders, an aid group that
maps border deaths.
That puts
2022 on track to match the last two years, when cases were almost double other
years in the last decade recorded by the office. Along the entire US-Mexican
border, since last fall Customs and Border Protection agents stopped migrants
for crossing the border illegally more than 1.8 million times,
historically
an extraordinarily high number. The agency recorded 557 Southwest border deaths
the previous year, the highest since it began tracking them in 1998.
Given how
quickly a body decomposes in the desert, unless it’s found within a day of
dying, identification might require expensive and time-consuming DNA analysis,
Hess said.
“The desert
does a good job covering up crimes,” said Mirza Monterroso, a forensic
scientist and missing migrant program director for the Colibrà Center, a
Tucson-based group that works with the examiner’s office.
Her database
has 4,000 missing migrants – 1,300 in Pima County alone – from reports from 14
countries and 43 U.S. states. She helps coordinate DNA analysis, costing more
than $1,100 per body with a bulk discount.
Consulates
help cover some of those expenses, as well as the nearly $4,000 it takes to
repatriate the remains, which is what most families want, said Azhar Dabdoub,
who manages a Tucson funeral home. It was arranging for flights of five
migrants’ bodies to Guatemala and one to El Salvador last week.
“This is
what forced migration looks like at the end,” he said, standing next to dozens
of just-delivered caskets. They were customized with a small viewing window so
families can see something of their relative, even if just a small belonging
Dabdoub tapes to the glass.
As soon as
the remains Andrade just found are recovered, Monterroso will start working on
confirming if they are indeed the young Mexican man’s. That might take up to a
year unless there’s a lucky break, like dental records.
The young
man’s aunt, who’s lived in the United States since she was 14, told the AP from
her home in New York that she still hopes for a miracle. But if the remains are
his, “we fought to the end to recover what little is left.”
“My nephew’s
dream died at the border, but a person shouldn’t end up like this,” she said,
her voice breaking. “They left him in the desert because he had injured his feet.”
A
38-year-old father of two from Mexico City nearly died the same way last week
after he developed debilitating foot blisters near the Baboquivari Peak, just
14 miles (23 kilometers) north of the border in Pima County.
Without food
for two days and now out of water, he called 911 and was helped down the
mountain by Daniel Bolin, an agent with the Border Patrol’s search, trauma and
rescue team who said this was his fifth rescue this year in the same spot.
Bolin brought him Gatorade and water before walking him down the precipitous
mountain ridge for an hour to an area reachable by all-terrain vehicle.
The agency
performed 3,000 rescues in the Tucson sector alone over the last 12 months, and
another 911 call came from the same mountain that afternoon.
About then,
sitting in the back of a Border Patrol truck and facing almost certain
expulsion to Mexico, the rescued man, who gave his name as Leonardo, said he
lost his business during the pandemic and came to the United States to find the
work he’s been unable to get for two years.
“But now I
don’t think I’ll come back here. I’m too old to walk,” he said.
Asked about
his future, he murmured “I don’t know” and burst into sobs, tears rolling down
his sunburned face.
Associated
Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with
The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely
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