Volunteer researchers recently have uncovered mass graves in a South Texas cemetery that they believe contain the bodies of immigrants who died crossing into the US illegally.
Two university anthropologists say the remains in Sacred Heart Burial Park in Falfurrias were found in trash bags, shopping bags, body bags or without a container.
Mass graves have been discovered in a south Texas cemetery, and researchers believe they contain the bodies of immigrants who died crossing into the US illegally, according to published reports Saturday.
The discovery at Sacred Heart Burial Park in Falfurrias came as part of a multi-year effort to identify immigrants who've died in the area near the US-Mexico border. The remote area is often deadly for immigrants from Mexico and Central America who set out on foot through ranchlands amid sweltering temperatures to avoid a nearby US Border Patrol checkpoint.
Anthropologists Lori Baker and Krista Latham and their students unearthed remains in trash bags, shopping bags, body bags or without a container at all, according to the Corpus Christi Caller Times. In one burial, bones of three bodies were inside one body bag. In another, at least five people in body bags and smaller plastic bags were piled on top of each other.
Skulls also were found in biohazard bags placed between coffins.
Latham called the discovery appalling. Baker said bodies that were not already skeletonized before burial were found in varying states of decomposition.
"To me it's just as shocking as the mass grave that you would picture in your head, and it's just as disrespectful," Latham told the Caller Times.
They exhumed 110 unidentified people from the cemetery in 2013. This summer, researchers have performed 52 exhumations, but because some remains were stored together, further study will be needed to determine exactly how many bodies have been recovered, Baker said.
Researchers told the newspaper that some remains were found under small, temporary grave markers bearing the name of local funeral home Funeraria del Angel Howard-Williams.
Brooks and Jim Hogg county officials said they pay the funeral home to handle bodies recovered in the remote parts of South Texas.
More than 300 people died crossing through Brooks County alone between 2011 and 2013 — representing more than 50 percent of the deaths in Texas' sprawling Rio Grande Valley.
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