Drought forces farmers' families from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to go on a dangerous journey to the US. Some of them succeed, others get deported, the third — parish in the desert.
Jennifer Vollner puts on latex gloves. There is a human skeleton on the table in front of her. She takes a caliper and measures a cranium. It is lucky she has a skull, as a head is often the first that gets lost from skeletal remains recovered in the desert full of scavengers. This person is not complete either. There are still some bones missing: no lower jaw, no hands, several vertebras are missing.
Vollner, a forensic anthropologist at Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, examines the skeleton and collects the information. A blunt angle of the pelvic bone, a wide brow bridge and skull's base indicate it was a biological man. The length of the femur tells her he was 5 feet 9 inches tall. The state of joints suggests he labored physically. And the shovel-shaped incisors give a hint that the person might have been from Central or South America.
"Ancestry is really tricky," Vollner said. "Sometimes we can loosely say this individual looks like they would be coming from Central America or Mexico." Forensic anthropologists collect all the information to build what they call "biological profile." "We're trying to figure out who this person was right in life."
It is impossible to define the cause of death by looking at the bones. Unless there are signs of severe trauma or bone gunshot wounds. Usually, there is nothing, so it is presumed that most likely a person on Vollner table died from dehydration.
It used to be a shorter journey, said Norma Price, a Tucson Samaritan volunteer, and retired doctor. "As numbers of border patrols increased dramatically in 2007, and people were forced into more dangerous territory," Price said that instead of one and one and a half days walk, the migrants hike now almost for a week. "They can't possibly carry enough water," said another Tucson Samaritans volunteer Gail Kocourek. Tucson Samaritans are a non-profit organization that leaves water on the migrant trails with a hope it will save lives.
The trails can be recognized by things people leave on their way: there are pieces of clothing, plastic bags and bottles, sometimes backpacks and fluffy shoe wrappers that leave no trace while walking. "When the first refugees were coming we were quite often seeing just a little plastic bag, gallon bag with their paperwork in it and maybe a toothbrush. And that was it," Gail said migrants whom they met on the trail recently don't care IDs anymore. She doesn't know why but speculates that maybe they don't want to show that they were previously deported or "coyotes" (how smugglers are called) ban it.
Absence of ID, of a lead, limits the options for Vollner and her colleagues and makes their job harder. Especially if there is nothing left but bones.
Vollner uses a small bone saw to take a sample of the femur. This piece of a bone in a paper envelope wrapped in plastic will be used for DNA-analysis. DNA-analysis from a bone sample is expensive —several thousands of dollars, Vollner said. So usually the sample is stored until the possible family of the diseased is found. To be found the family should be actively seeking their loved ones and file a missing person report describing some features Vollner could guess by looking at the bones. And some cases fit into too many missing people profiles: a middle-aged man of average height coming from Central America. Such remains can be stored for years in boxes until maybe new methods are invented, said Bruce Anderson, another forensic anthropologist. Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner just got a grant to run all these unidentified samples with the hope that it will help to find a match.
"DNA is not the most common way for us to identify [the body]," Anderson said that only around 15% of identifications are done through DNA. "Many times it's the only way for us to identify somebody." DNA is also used to confirm the identity.
How many people die in the desert annually is unknown, Medical Examiner's office will count only those who are found — around 150 human remains are recovered annually in Pima County, according to Anderson. In 20 years almost 3,000 remains were recovered, around 2,000 of them identified.
Although walking through the border to the US territory is risky, people still do it. "They [US government] thought if we put the wall where it is easiest to cross, they wouldn't cross because it would be too dangerous," Kocourek said. "But they don't realize how desperate people are."
Climate change contributes to the existing problems of the region: poverty and violence. Droughts get more frequent, ocean level is rising. The experts warn, it only will get worse.
However, neither climate change, nor gang violence is among the official reasons for asylum, which makes it impossible for many of those who ran from hunger and poverty to enter legally. That means people will continue to die in the desert.
"My father used to say: "What would you do for your family?" Most people say "I would do anything. I would walk barefoot across the desert!" Kocourek said.