Public, Social and Academic Coordination. Forensic Search, Rescue and Identification of Lost Migrants at the Arizona Border

Migration is constantly changing due to its adaptive nature, and it demands a multisectoral and multidisciplinary approach. Migrants are individuals with rights and restrictions, yet as biological organisms, they have a complex relationship both with the society they leave behind and with the one where they wish to stop being migrants. As they travel, they carry their vulnerabilities with them and will find more along the way.

When migration is romanticized, the place of origin is often viewed with nostalgia and the destination with optimism. The journey itself—the displacement—is frequently overlooked.

This displacement between the locations of origin and destination happens throughout a variety of geographies, often inhospitable. Migration suggests growth and resilience, but can also involve disease, death, or disappearance.

This article attempts to describe the networks of collaboration that exist in the public, social, and academic sectors, focusing on a critical migration route that has seen high mortality rates for over three decades: the Sonoran Desert in the border between Mexico and the United States. The text will address the mechanisms employed to locate and rescue individuals who go missing while attempting to cross the border irregularly, as well as the tools used to identify and recover the remains of those who lose their lives in transit.

MIGRATION THROUGH THE MEXICO-UNITED STATES BORDER
Migratory flows occur as a result of the intersection of push factors within the origin community and pull factors in that of destination. When these flows emerge, countries, particularly the hosting ones, establish regulations to manage them according to their perceived “desirability”. For several decades, salary disparity, the growth of the American economy, and its abundance of job opportunities, along with increasingly precarious economic situations, a shortage of social services and threats to security in Latin American countries, have increased the number of migrants from one region to the other who, in the absence of regular channels, attempt to cross the border.

Here we specifically address the effects of irregular migration on individuals who, in simple words, avoid official border checkpoints. Regular forms of migration, such as work visas for seasonal agricultural workers (H-2A) or nonagricultural workers (H2-B), for professionals under trade agreements (TN), students (F-1, M-1, J-1), and fiancés of United States citizens (K-1), entail significantly less vulnerability and do not result in lethal border crossings. Similarly, the recent wave of economic migrants from the United States to Mexico does not involve loss of life. These individuals either temporarily or permanently settle in our country due to the high costs of living expelling them from their cities, or the desire to improve their quality of life with the same income, particularly retired people or young urban professionals who can work remotely, also known as “digital nomads.” While the economic motivation may be similar, the vulnerability and risks faced during the journey are vastly different.

Migration regulations in the United States have been restrictive towards the regular channels aiming to fill the job vacancies and have intensified border controls in urban areas where most migrations occur. These policies are called “prevention through deterrence,” and represent a significant human cost. Following the implementation of Operation Hold on the Line in El Paso in 1993 and Operation Gatekeeper in 1994 at the California border, migratory flows were displaced towards the Sonoran Desert. This led to a substantial increase in the number of fatalities among irregular migrants attempting to cross the border (Rubio-Goldsmith et al., 2006). The region became known as “the death funnel” due to the large number of human remains that accumulated in the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office in Tucson, Arizona, posing difficulties for their identification.

The international border over the Sonoran Desert is not the only region where irregular migration has resulted in fatalities, but it is particularly critical due to its extreme climate. Temperatures often soar above 50º C in the summer and plummet below zero in the winter, which makes it a zone with limited access to aid. Given these conditions, various procedures and mechanisms have been established to search for and rescue individuals or their remains, facilitate identification, and involve authorities from multiple levels of government, consulates, social organizations and academic institutes. The following two sections will provide a view of the most important ones.

SEARCH, RESCUE AND IDENTIFICATION ACTIONS
Four primary categories of search, rescue and identification of lost migrants can be identified at this border. Each category requires distinct management and activities:

1. When the person is believed to have been detained by migration authorities, but their location is unknown. This process requires consulting migratory and detention databases, as well as local authorities such as state or county prisons, and hospital records.
2. When the migrant’s life or integrity is known to be in imminent danger, and their location is known approximately. This situation requires immediate rescue attempts, considering the available resources and the vast and difficult-to-access territory where these disappearances often occur.
3. When the information available suggests that a migrant may have died during their attempt to cross, but their remains have not been recovered. This involves establishing post-mortem search groups, registering possible locations of the death site, and providing physical descriptions of the deceased. These databases enable the future identification of human remains discoveries in the area where the death occurred, thereby shortening the forensic identification actions.
4. When a body, a skeleton, or its fragments are discovered and believed to be from a migrant, so identification is necessary. The methods of forensic identification depend on the condition of the remains and may include visual identification by family members, identification through distinguishing marks, or genetic methods (DNA tests) applied to the family members in the area where the remains of the deceased were found.

AN ECOSYSTEM OF AGENCIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
The actions described in the four previous categories are carried out by agencies and organizations from the public and social sectors in the bordering territories of Arizona and Mexico. The following are key actors involved in these intersectional efforts. These efforts have started in this region and have expanded due to their successful responses, covering all the border between the United States and Mexico. Clearly, these are multisectoral synergies that prioritize coordination, including international coordination, and protocolization of measures to enhance support in addressing these issues and provide protection to migrants and guidance to their families.

1. Border Patrol’s Missing Migrant Program (MMP). A primary function of United States Border Patrol is to safeguard the border, especially in the context of migration. While the main function of the Border Patrol is often associated with preventing irregular migration, it is important to recognize that this responsibility also encompasses the protection of human life and the safeguarding of child victims, as mandated by laws and judicial decisions. That is to say, there is a humanitarian component inherently linked to the security efforts, regardless of the migratory situation. To address the critical condition of migrants whose life or integrity were endangered in border areas and reduce fatalities along the southwest border, the Border Patrol launched a program in 2015 in the Tucson Sector to protocolize and improve the search efforts for missing people. It was designed in collaboration with local authorities, consulates, and social organizations to provide critical support to missing migrants in high-risk situations. All things considered, the Border Patrol possesses unparalleled material, technical and human resources for conducting rescue operations within the expansive and remote border areas. Emergency calls (911) made along the border are geolocated, and this enables the response authorities to locate missing individuals in hard-to-access areas. In critical regions of the Sonoran Desert, the MMP is activated in response to emergency calls, prompting rescue operations.
2. Consular border network. Consulates from the countries of origin of most migrants must play a crucial role, regulated internationally by consular and diplomatic law. These consulates can coordinate with the United States’ authorities while maintaining communication with migrants and their families and provide important information or guidance on their situation within the context of mobility across the border. Mexico has an unparalleled consular network in the United States, with 53 offices, including 13 along the border with our country. Over three decades, these consulates have fostered daily connections with local border agencies, particularly with the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), to improve operational effectiveness. Other consulates along the Mexico-United States border also participate remotely in this tasks, serving migrants from their countries and their families. El Salvador has four consulates, Guatemala has three, and Honduras one. Regardless of the circumstances, consulates serve as the initial nexus connecting migrants, their families and support organizations. It is crucial that consulates maintain a position that does not jeopardize the migratory status of those seeking assistance, while also providing cultural and linguistic guidance to their fellow citizens, thereby performing essential work.
3. The Center for Information and Assistance for Mexicans (CIAM). In 2013, the Mexican government established a telephone assistance center to provide 24/7 guidance and rapid responses to Mexicans, facilitating consular protection services and offering insights into the migratory reality. Since its creation in March 2024, the CIAM has assisted over 2.3 million queries. It is no coincidence that this center is based in Tucson, Arizona, as the Mexican consulate in that city had operated a call center since 2008 to address the migratory phenomenon in the Sonoran Desert border. One of the primary functions of the CIAM is to activate the MMP, particularly in search and rescue operations where a person’s life or integrity is at risk. The CIAM’s strengths in the search and localization process of missing migrants include: 1) guaranteed assistance throughout the year, 24/7; 2) compiling useful information to facilitate swift rescues through standardized procedures and tested protocols; 3) centralizing information to send cases to the corresponding consulate, eliminating the need for families to identify a correct office and helping them to avoid confusion due to geographical lack of knowledge; 4) both lost migrants and their families can effectively reach the CIAM, either from the United States or Mexico by dialing +1 520 623 7874; 5) the information provided is confidential and is also protected by Mexican personal data protection laws, and 6) it allows to provide a more human and personalized accompaniment and follow-up from the consular network throughout the entire process.
4. Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office. This Tucson-based Medical Examiner’s Offices has emerged as a national and international reference in the identification of deceased migrants in transit. Forensic practices for migrant deaths differ from traditional cases involving deaths in medical facilities, private homes or crime scenes, and even in comparison to the death of homeless populations. The ways to identify migrants are more difficult because they often possess identity documents from other countries, which can be more complicated to verify; migrants typically do not have fingerprints or dental records in forensic databases of the United States, and their remains are frequently skeletons, or skeletal fragments in an advanced state of decomposition. Coordination between consulates and organizations supporting migrants has been essential in facilitating genetic identification through biological samples from possible relatives in the countries of origin. Organizations such as the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and the Colibri Center for Human Rights, as well as the foreign chancelleries of some countries, such as the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, have participated in this labor in a coordinated manner. Other mechanisms include the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) databases and fingerprinting by the Border Patrol. It is noteworthy that multiple public and social funds (or grants) have contributed to cover the high costs of forensic DNA identifications to compensate for the budgetary constraints of the forensic authorities at the border.
5. Civil society search and rescue groups. Humanitarian organizations supporting migrants have been crucial in assisting families searching for their members in the context of migration. The humanitarian organizations have provided a range of assistance, from placing water and food in remote areas to aid migrants, to organizing search missions for remains in strategic areas. In addition to these, civil society groups have also been vocal in advocating for changes to migration regulations and practices that increase risks or have inhumane effects on migrants and their families. This is not a complete list of organizations, but some of them include Humane Borders, The Coalition for Human Rights, Tucson Samaritans, Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans and No More Deaths. There are also numerous search and rescue groups such as Capellanes del Desierto, Eagles of the Desert, The Armadillos, and Paralelo 31 SAR.
6. Georeferenced databases of the organization Humane Borders/Fronteras Compasivas: A valuable source of information that collects individualized records of each death along the border region (UNAM’s Alfonso Garcia Robles Award, 2020). Humane Borders/Fronteras Compasivas has created an open consultation map with data on human remains located in this border region, both identified and unidentified. This database serves as a crucial resource for study and recognition.
7. University of Arizona Binational Migration Institute (BMI). Several universities in the border region of both countries have undertaken academic efforts to understand the dimension of the migratory phenomenon and the human repercussions of border control initiatives. The Binational Migration Institute in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona deserves special recognition. Research conducted by academics has been fundamental in obtaining more comprehensive and systematized information compared to journalist coverage of migration, which, by its very nature, gathers incomplete or partial information. While various academic works on forensic identification and migration have been carried out at UNAM and other research centers, there is still vast potential for further investigations of these issues in the region.

CONCLUSION
When migration enters the public discourse, it becomes an electoral issue and will be used as such. As a result, the regulation of migration shifts from a policy-driven scheme to a political one, sometimes serving as a pretext for political agendas. Migration to the United States has suffered this fate at various periods in history. This has led to a cumulative set of regulations and border controls designed to control migration flows by deterrence and, consequently, have pushed migrants towards more dangerous routes through inhospitable areas such as the Sonoran Desert.

Over the years, coordinated actions have been conducted by United States federal and local agencies, Mexican and foreign consular networks, along with civil society organizations to address the complex issues surrounding migrant searches, rescues, and forensic identifications. The academic guild has also done its part to document the scale of this unfolding human tragedy.

However, the challenge remains beyond the capabilities of these public and social institutions. The structural factors driving high-risk irregular migration persist and are not expected to change soon, thereby perpetuating the humanitarian crisis unfolding in this border region over the past three decades. In the meantime, it is crucial to refine and strengthen local actions, foster international synergies, and not leave migrants alone in their extreme vulnerability, as they continue to make these dangerous crossings every day without true understanding of the risks involved.

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