The Border Patrol embraces ‘humanitarian aspect’ of job
Agents rescue, recover and identify missing migrants using technology
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent scrutinized video of a dying migrant on her cellphone, trying to match the background to the ranch she was searching for his body last month.
As 25-year-old Yoel Nieto Valladares lay on the sandy ground — shirtless and sweating, jeans cinched with a rectangular metal belt buckle — he was barely able to sip from a Coke as another man fanned him with a black cap. The dying man’s hands twitched, a tattoo of his father and younger brother’s initials visible on his arm. His eyes rolled. Moments later, in a second video, Nieto’s black polo shirt was on and his arms lay atop it, limp. His eyes were open, staring.
Someone in the group had sent the videos to Nieto’s family with GPS coordinates. “I really hope we find him,” Agent Nancy Balogh said.
Though the Border Patrol’s primary mission remains apprehending those who cross into the U.S. illegally, the agency several years ago launched a Missing Migrant Program in Arizona — which has since expanded and evolved amid an uptick in migration and increase in heat-related deaths along the border.
The number of people arriving last month — 188,829 — was the largest in years. The busiest area for crossings was south Texas, where agents this month stopped 736 migrants in three groups near the Rio Grande. As of last month, they had helped recover more than 324 migrant remains and conducted 9,201 rescues nationwide, 81% more than all of last year.
In Brooks County, Texas, about 75 miles north of the Rio Grande Valley, the agency has installed equipment to help find stranded migrants faster.
More than 1,400 rescue signs across the region are labeled with GPS coordinates. Agents have identified more than 22,000 landmarks that can be referenced during a migrant’s 911 call — from power poles to windmills, pipelines and cattle guards. And 30 mobile, solar-powered rescue beacons in remote areas with little to no cellphone reception are equipped with cameras, a system that already has led to the rescue of a migrant.
By summer’s end, the beacons will alert agents’ cellphones directly. By year’s end, they plan to have 170 beacons nationwide, which can be used to rescue migrants and investigate, Supervisory Agent Brandon Copp said.
When attempts to rescue migrants lost on the ranches come too late, Copp’s threeperson Border Patrol team trained in forensics works with an intelligence officer to help identify remains.
Like many of Texas’ 254 counties, Brooks — population 7,100 — doesn’t have a medical examiner. Death investigations typically are handled by justices of the peace, and local funeral homes have been known to cut corners. Researchers investigating unmarked graves at a local cemetery in recent years found multiple bodies of migrants buried together, some in plastic bags and milk crates. The investigators had to exhume and catalog DNA in international databases to help identify them.
Now the sheriff ’s office is working with the Border Patrol to more quickly identify and release migrants’ remains without sending them for autopsies or DNA testing, which can be expensive and time-consuming.
Some of the Border Patrol agents in south Texas, El Paso and Tucson have trained to photograph dead migrants’ fingerprints to help consulates identify them. They also have learned to recover fingerprints from bodies that have decayed or been submerged in water.
“Never thought I’d be doing this, the forensic side of it, the compassion,” said Agent Jerry Passement while searching for Nieto’s body. “It’s a puzzle we’ve got to try to put together.”
The process of finding missing migrants often begins when those in distress, stranded and desperate for water, call 911 from their cellphones. Dispatchers request their GPS coordinates, then connect them to the Border Patrol’s operations center, where agents also try to find them.
The search can be daunting. A Guatemalan man who called last month said he had wandered for two days, far from any road, sign or light. Agents couldn’t find him.
“I am lost and my companion died overnight. I’m alone here,” another 28year-old Honduran migrant told dispatchers on May 18. “I’m bad. I can’t walk.”
Later that day, agents rescued him and recovered his friend’s body.
“The humanitarian aspect, we’re putting more of an effort into it,” Balogh said as she searched for Nieto. “Nobody deserves to die like this.”
They’re working with Eddie Canales, founder of the Brooks County-based South Texas Human Rights Center, an advocacy group that has relayed information to authorities and helped save at least 50 migrants in recent months, Canales said. “We’re seeing a phenomenal increase in the calls that we’re getting regarding people going missing,” he said.
In recent years, the Border Patrol’s relationship with migrant advocates had become strained — the agency even helped prosecute some volunteers who left water and other supplies for migrants in the desert. Now there is more of a partnership.
Earlier this month, Canales checked a dozen of the group’s more than 150 water barrels, built on nearby ranches for migrants. In the last month, migrants had taken seven jugs of water, 28 gallons total. One halfempty barrel was surrounded by discarded clothes. Another contained five wilted dollar bills, which Canales presumed had been left by a grateful migrant.
As Nieto was making the trek north, his cousin Jhoselyn Nieto said, smugglers had offered the family a choice: Pay more — about $11,000 each — to ensure that he and her brother Heyder
Perdomo Nieto, 31, took a shorter, safer route to South Carolina.
“We decided to pay more so that they could come safely,” said Jhoselyn, 34.
She and a cousin in Honduras said the men had grown up in the capital, Tegucigalpa, and were illequipped to survive in the brush. Yoel Nieto, known as “Gato” because of his green
eyes, was a college-educated call center operator who dreamed of working at a bank. Her brother, who made furniture, cared for his 8-year-old daughter. Smugglers promised that the men would travel mostly by car, walking only about eight hours in Texas to circumvent a Border Patrol checkpoint.
When the pair had not arrived
days later, the family debated whether to contact authorities.
Jhoselyn messaged her brother, and a guide responded that the group was headed to Houston.
She messaged the following day, but the guide stopped responding.
Four days later, someone claiming to be a fellow migrant texted Jhoselyn, saying one of her relatives had died and the other was presumed dead.
“You lie,” she wrote. “How can we find them?”
“Sadly, this is a consequence for those who come here,” the stranger wrote.
“There are consequences, but you played your part,” she responded. “Tell me the location and send me a video if he is dead.”
He sent her the GPS coordinates and videos.
She watched in horror, realizing her brother was missing.
“We didn’t know if he was living or dead,” she said.
On June 2, she sent the videos to the Border Patrol.
The next day, agents spent half an hour combing the brush before they saw vultures circling.
“They found him,” Balogh said, and crossed herself as she always does when they locate a migrant’s body.
At first, agents couldn’t be sure it was Nieto. Scavengers had dragged what was left of the body under a log. Agents checked it for identification, but found none. Then they saw a black polo shirt in the grass, a Coke bottle and a belt that matched the videos.
“That’s for sure the belt buckle,” Copp said.
They had found Nieto. Agents notified a justice of the peace, who pronounced him dead.
“The sad thing is, the family held on to that video for almost a week,” Copp said.
There was no sign of Perdomo.
That day, after the Border Patrol called to notify the family that agents had found Nieto’s body, they also got a call from Perdomo.
He was with a smuggler in Houston.
“He said he was OK, but we had to pay again,” his sister said, an additional $4,000.
Perdomo said that his cousin had died during a four-day trek with 18 other Central American migrants through arid ranches with little food or water. After staying with the body for six hours, Perdomo had walked overnight and part of the next day. He stumbled upon another group of migrants whose guide took pity on him, gave him water, tuna and chocolate. Perdomo was so dehydrated, he vomited. He asked if they could retrieve his cousin’s body.
“No, he’s dead,” the guide said, “but we can help you.”
Fellow migrants had to support Perdomo’s shoulders as they walked. Wounded, dirty and hungry, he finally arrived on June 15.
“He cries for Yoel. He remembers him. He tells me things that happened on the road,” his sister said.
Nieto’s father decided to have him cremated so that he could have a funeral for him in South Carolina. But the Honduran Consulate insisted that the body be DNA-tested, which staff told the family could take up to eight months, Jhoselyn said.
“We want to recover his body as soon as possible so my uncle can have peace,” she said. “He can’t have him alive; at least he can have his ashes.”
‘Never thought I’d be doing this, the forensic side of it, the compassion. It’s a puzzle we’ve got to try to put together.’ — Jerry Passement, Border Patrol agent