“These are old,” White said, gesturing at the faint tracks in the dirt. “No one is in danger right now.” For now, at least, he said under his breath.
“It would be dangerous to be out there for several hours,” said Jeremy Katz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Brownsville, Texas. Even those migrants who manage to cross the river and make their way inland face myriad challenges, White said. Led by smugglers, many migrants take risky routes to avoid a Border Patrol checkpoint in the county seat of Falfurrias, about 80 miles north of the Rio Grande, often without enough food and water to endure the dayslong trek, he said.
His phone never stops beeping with messages from desperate people, mostly in Latin America, whose relatives have gone missing. He pulled out his phone and read messages from a woman from Guatemala who had not heard from her brother in months. “Please find him,” she had written. She included a photo and description: 28 years old, black eyes, brown skin and a tattoo of a rose.“Without coordinates, how can you find someone lost in this vast land?” he said.
The personal effects of an unidentified deceased migrant at the lab of Operation Identification, a project of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, on Aug. 3, 2023. “It is extremely rewarding to help give someone answers, after you go 12 years without knowing,” Kaplan said.