A week after 53 migrants died in a suffocating caravan in San Antonio, Texas, some of their nationalities are still unclear, highlighting the demanding situations officials in at least 4 other countries face in identifying victims of the deadliest human trafficking tragedy in the United States. . recorded.
Data from other governments has been marred by confusion and discrepancies, such as government documents to identify patients using identity documents, passports and documents found in the caravan, fingerprints and images provided by family members.
The governments of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras say they already know at least the migrants in the van.
But according to Bexar County, where the tragedy occurred, only 35 patients are known with certainty. On Tuesday, 20 Mexicans, 10 Guatemalans and five Hondurans were conclusively known, according to spokesman Tom Peine, who added that the criteria for identifying the forensic pathologist are sometimes stricter than those of other governments.
Migrants who die in border regions do not bring identity, said Cesar Ortigoza, president of Armadillos Ni un Migrante Menos, a binational volunteer organization that searches for missing migrants along the U. S. -Mexico border. Sometimes the identity process takes months or years, Ortigoza said. .
Smugglers “often tell migrants, ‘Look, if you bring an ID, throw it away, because if you’re arrested by the police, they’ll arrest you and they’ll know who you are,'” Ortigoza said. identities. “
In some cases, government officials have also struggled to locate and talk to relatives of San Antonio’s sick who live in remote spaces or speak indigenous languages, lawyers and officials said.
Confusion and discrepancies
Much of the confusion about nationalities stems from a Mexican press conference last Wednesday at which the director of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, Francisco Garduño, said 27 Mexicans had died, as had 14 Hondurans, seven Guatemalans and two Salvadorans.
Since then, the governments of Honduras and El Salvador have declared those figures inaccurate.
The Honduran government released the names of six Hondurans discovered in the trailer, saying they know the origin of Garduño’s problem. Salvador’s foreign ministry told Reuters on Monday it knew of Salvadoran victims. Meanwhile, the Guatemalan government released the names of 16 deceased Guatemalans known by fingerprints.
A spokesman for Mexico’s Foreign Ministry specified the source of Garduño’s information, but said the number of Mexicans killed in the caravan remained unchanged.
The Bexar County medical examiner took longer to find the nationalities of the victims.
“There is nothing worse than misidentification,” spokesman Peine said.
Several false IDs have already circulated.
The day after the tragedy, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard posted on Twitter a photo of two Mexican credentials discovered in the trailer. Another of the people known in the tweet, Haneydi Yasmin Antonio, from southern Mexico, temporarily posted on Facebook that he’s fine. She said her ID had been stolen the year before.
Meanwhile, two Guatemalan women known on social media as potential victims actually drowned in the Rio Grande, said Karla Samayoa, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry.
The lack of trust has left families in Mexico and Central America worried as they await news of their loved ones.
Alvaro Enrique Ojeda’s circle of relatives learned of him on June 23, when he told them he was waiting in a space in Texas to get into a caravan with 50 other people, his sister Maria Guadalupe Ojeda said in a video on Facebook.
Without a word from the Mexican government, they were hopeful that he could be hospitalized or detained, even as mourners in Texas placed a wooden cross with Ojeda’s call near where the trailer was located.
On Monday, a week after the tragedy, the Mexican government contacted Ojeda’s circle of relatives to make a photographic identification of Ojeda’s body, said Omar Hernandez, a migrant advocate who supported the circle of relatives.
“At least now they know where he is,” Hernandez told Reuters. “They don’t have any more uncertainty. “
Collaborators: Nelson Rentería, Gustavo Palencia and Sofía Menchú