In a border graveyard, volunteers exhume migrants’ bodies and search for their families

A metal cross, painted white and starting to rust where it had been placed in the ground over unmarked migrant graves, is one of many scattering the ground at the Maverick County Cemetery, where dozens of “John Doe” graves have been exhumed in an effort to identify bodies in Eagle Pass. (Credit: Kaylee Greenlee Beal for The Texas Tribune)

EAGLE PASS — Victoria Soto stood at the bottom of a grave earlier this month and carefully scratched dirt from the edges of a body bag, then scooped it into a bucket held by Amelia Konda, a Texas State University classmate. Behind them, two other students used a dustpan to loosen the dirt around another body bag.

With the sunrise painting the sky orange, the forensic anthropology students lifted three soil-covered body bags and carried them to a nearby tent. When Soto and classmate Stephanie Baker unzipped one of the body bags, the body was unrecognizable and produced a sulfur smell that they’d grown used to during days of exhuming the bodies of migrants in this border city.