Tracing Trajectories: Qualitative Visualizations of Migrant Death in South Texas,1993–2020

Abstract

Executive Summary

This paper explores how qualitative information may be used to enhance understanding and inform recommendations for improved accounting of migrant deaths along the Texas-Mexico border. While border crossing related deaths affect jurisdictions throughout the US’s Southwestern border states and Northern Mexican states, Texas has unique challenges that merit specific examination. In short, the management and investigation of unidentified migrant decedents in Texas is severely fragmented and often noncompliant with Texas Criminal Code Procedure.

I explore a way to improve accounting of migrant deaths leveraging qualitative information, local newspaper articles from South Texas and Northern Mexico, by using descriptive summaries coupled with Sankey Diagrams and a programmatic technique, qualitative spatial representation (QSR). QSR enabled me to identify under-recognized stakeholders (South Texas locals, Mexican consulates) and under-supported counties (i.e., those with migrant deaths that do not share a border directly with Mexico).

I found that local English-language newspapers obscured the prevalence of migrant deaths and that their narrative tone of “business as usual” normalized the occurrence of such deaths. The Spanish-language articles better represented the diversity of agencies and individuals that were involved in the various aspects of migrant remains management and forensic investigation, most notably residents of South Texas themselves (or situational participants who first found the remains) and Mexican consulates. Finally, I noted that the collaborations among Texas counties and between Texan and Mexican jurisdictions, when they were described in the newspapers, highlighted that the phenomenon of migrant deaths penetrates beyond the dividing line of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo River. Migrant deaths must be accounted for in a way that reflects a regional experience in which people may perish as far as ~100 miles into Texas’ interior. Considering these observations, I have two policy recommendations.

First, the Office of the Texas Governor should establish funds distinct from the Operation Lone Star program for the management of unidentified human remains. Currently, grants through the Operation Lone Star Program are the only funds available in Texas to support identification of migrant decedents. However, this program is explicitly designed to further border security operations in the state of Texas, which can contradict efforts around recovery and identification. The documentation and forensic investigation of the unidentified deceased can be eclipsed or neglected under the larger deterrence aims of Operation Lone Star.

Second, to improve accounting and increase documentation of migrant deaths, a Regional Identification Center should be established in South Texas. Not every county in Texas has or has access to a Medical Examiner’s office, including the means to transport and pay for autopsy or other forensic services. The Center would provide training, store extra equipment such as mobile refrigerated morgues, and hire personnel to inventory cases, and report information to the state (e.g., vital statistics) and to foreign consulates. A Regional Identification Center would counteract the challenges highlighted in the local newspaper summaries and QSR by decreasing the isolation of counties experiencing migrant deaths and serve as a documentary and communication hub for stakeholders in Texas and Mexico.