Isamar Terrazas

Students in the Anthropology Department at Texas State are helping law enforcement agencies identify the remains of dozens of undocumented immigrants. Isamar Terrazas has the story in this Bobcat Update:

Spradley…4 secs…This is a huge issue. It's a silent mass disaster along the U-S/Mexico border,in particular, Texas.

Helping identify human remains is a huge learning opportunity for students, and their work is also helping national and international agencies in identifying missing persons. Last summer, 63 bodies were exhumed from a Brooks County cemetery and brought to the Freeman Ranch at Texas State. There, graduate students and undergraduate volunteers, remove any remaining flesh from the bodies, completely clean them up and begin the identification process. The bodies arrive with personal items, like clothes and jewelry, which are stored in an ice box for preservation. The department works with Baylor University and the University of North Texas as well as the Argentine Anthropology Forensics Team.

Spradley…15 secs…We don't just want to box up a set of skeletal remains and then just send them back to the families without any supporting information.

Stand up: These are the remains of a 30-to-40-year-old Hispanic male. The forensics team at Texas State is hoping to identify him in order to be sent to his loved ones.

Once some of the characteristics needed are established, the information is then uploaded to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NAMUS. The system is helpful in reaching   families in Mexico, Central and South America. The processing of immigrant bodies would be too gruesome for the untrained, but for forensic science students it is a necessary task that they volunteered to do. 

McDaniel…15 secs…Some of these are really young individuals and we don't have that many young individuals in our collection so we can learn from that too aging and sex methods.

None of the remains have been identified as of today but the forensics team is working to ensure that all the remains can be given a proper burial with a full name on each grave.

Spradley…15 secs…When somebody crosses the border to come into this country, it's just wrong for them to be buried and never thought of again. Everybody deserves the chance of identification. We have human rights in life and death.

Reporting for Bobcat Update, I'm Isamar Terrazas.