Hiding the Cost of a Dangerous Border: Migrant Deaths as Enforced Disappearances
Along the span of the U.S.-Mexico border, there are mass graves of unidentified migrants who have died crossing into the United States. These are people whose bodies are found on U.S. soil and buried anonymously. For many, their families and communities will never learn of their fate.
The U.S.-Mexico border has become the most dangerous land route for migration in the world. In 2022, one organization counted 686 migrant deaths along the border. While serial undercounting and insufficient data obfuscated the true danger of this area, every year there are more fatalities.
In Texas, border crossing has become more dangerous in no small part because of Operation Lone Star’s brutal ‘deterrence’ agenda under Governor Greg Abbott. Beginning in 2021, Operation Lone Star invoked the Texas Disaster Act of 1975 to deploy state and local law enforcement to patrol the Texas border. Amongst these policies are the construction of razor wire barriers in rivers, the removal of drinking water in deserts, and the deployment of countless dangerous tools in pursuit of deterring migrants from crossing the border. Additionally, border guards routinely chase people into hostile terrain and through environmental hazards such as deserts or deep water.
The border conditions under Operation Lone Star are beyond inhumane. Last year, one trooper-medic released unreported cases to the media of migrants being injured or killed by Greg Abbott’s policies. This included a four-year old girl who collapsed from heat exhaustion after attempting to pass through razor wire and was pushed back towards Mexico, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage while caught in razor wire, and young children, including nursing infants, being pushed back into treacherous waters. None of these cases were officially reported. The direct result of these policies is that migrants are dying in increasing numbers on U.S. soil and their bodies are being taken into custody by American authorities. They are then buried in mass or improperly marked graves without being identified.
Texas authorities have attributed this tragedy to a lack of resources. Following Operation Lone Star, the number of migrant deaths has only increased, and the resources allocated to identifying bodies taken into custody have diminished. When someone dies under unknown circumstances, there is a series of procedures that the state is obligated to fulfill. Generally, this means a body is taken into the custody of the county medical examiner, who performs forensic examinations and documents their findings.
This process may not be something we often question, but we intrinsically know its importance. Treating the dead with dignity and respect is essential for anyone who takes a person’s body into their custody. It may be taken for granted that the state would share this same respect, but it should not. Instead, Texas coroners are burying unidentified persons in mass graves without completing the required forensic testing and documentation. This means that there is little chance that their identities can ever be determined.
Documenting and circulating forensic information is crucial to identifying missing persons who are later found dead and informing their families. However, many border counties in Texas lack even one qualified medical examiner and are grossly underequipped for the growing number of migrant deaths. As a result, thousands of migrants are being buried without being identified, and without required forensic testing and documentation. When this happens, the death never appears on a missing persons database and the migrant’s family is prevented from ever learning their fate. These policy choices to divert resources away from medical examiners and coroners and towards making the border more dangerous, not only have tragic consequences for those involved, but are also illegal. Under Texas state law, when someone dies under unknown circumstances, especially if they have not been identified, there is a rigorous set of procedures that authorities are bound to follow. These procedures are especially important to determine if a body was a victim of a crime. When bodies are buried without these procedures, they are thus denied this protection of the law. Moreover, failing to investigate crimes may have far-reaching consequences for community safety.
In some cases, forensic teams have been able to exhume bodies and perform forensic identification tests that were neglected. However, this is a difficult process and nearly impossible with older remains.
The scale of this harm is enormous. Each person whose identity and whereabouts are permanently lost represents entire families and communities who are left in limbo and grief for generations.
Thus, migrants crossing the border risk not only death but complete disappearance.
Enforced disappearance is among the most egregious human rights violations and occurs when a state places someone outside the protection of the law by concealing their whereabouts and depriving them of liberty.
These migrants, then, have been forcibly disappeared.
Like many other forms of enforced disappearance, such as holding prisoners incommunicado, U.S. authorities are forcibly disappearing migrants by failing to document or disclose their location. Without any ability to influence their fate, they are forced to endure the final indignity of being permanently hidden from the world. Families and communities are left to grieve without closure or the ability to bury their loved ones according to their beliefs. Additionally, failing to identify migrant deaths eliminates the possibility of holding anyone responsible.
Calling these migrants’ deaths and wrongful burials enforced disappearances matters in international law. This label articulates that this is an injustice caused by state action and carries with it international condemnation. Identifying these migrant deaths as enforced disappearances thus carries with it a duty for both the state and the larger international community to respond and hold perpetrators accountable.
Viewing these ongoing tragedies as migrant disappearances, rather than just collateral from underfunding, can help us identify the responsible state actors and push for policy change.
Sabine Adamson is a student attorney in the Boston University Human Rights Clinic and a second-year J.D. candidate at Boston University School of Law.
