TEXAS, USA — Brooks, Duval and Kenedy County are soon going to get some financial relief thanks to a new law that Congressman Vicente Gonzalez helped get enacted. The law will reimburse counties for the cost associated with immigrant bodies discovered in South Texas.
The remains of immigrants have turned up around Brooks County for as long as anyone can remember. The county sits in some of the hottest and driest stretches of the Wild Horse Desert, or as some people call it, The Desert of the Dead.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of immigrants illegally make their way across the area. In some years, hundreds end up dying in Brooks County because they’re trying to sneak around the border checkpoint South of Falfurrias along Highway 281.
”It will definitely help our resources and bringing some more assets that’s needed," Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez said.
Sheriff Martinez was part of a press conference which Congressman Vicente Gonzalez held at the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office in Edinburg. The Congressman spread the word about a new law that he helped get passed called the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act.
”It’s going to take the burden off taxpayers," Gonzalez said. "Our local sheriff's departments have struggled for decades now and have had to use local resources to find the remains of the deceased out in the open pastures and the deserts at the cost of local taxpayers and sheriffs departments.”
The cost associated with each of those remains can run into the thousands of dollars. The federal government will now cover those costs as well as paying to install more rescue beacons and items like that which are needed to try and cut down on the numbers of immigrants dying out here.
In 2020, there were some 35 bodies found in Brooks County alone, bringing the total to around 800 remains found over the past 10 years. Its left Brooks County with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost still on the books.
”We are over $680,000 so it’s just a matter of sitting down and figuring out how we’re going to handle this funding," Martinez said.
Congressman Gonzalez said the federal government is committed to funding this effort. He believes it was always its responsibility not local taxpayers.
The Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act will:
• Expand eligibility for grants to allow applications from State and local governments; accredited government-funded Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) forensic laboratories; medical examiners; accredited publicly-funded toxicology, crime, and university forensic anthropology center laboratories; and nonprofit organizations who have collaborative agreements with State and county forensic offices for entry of data into CODIS or National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems (NamUS).
• Require reporting to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and NamUS regarding missing persons and deceased individuals found in each applicant’s jurisdiction.
• Add privacy protections for biological family reference samples that will be uploaded into CODIS by precluding disclosure of such information to Federal or state law enforcement agency’s for criminal law enforcement purposes.
• Authorize the use of grant funds to cover costs for the:
◦ transportation, processing, identification, and reporting of missing persons and unidentified remains;
◦ hiring of additional DNA case analysts and technicians, fingerprint examiners, and forensic odonatologists and anthropologists needed to support identification; and
◦ purchase of state-of-the-art forensic and DNA-typing and analytical equipment.
• Expand U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) legal authorities to allow for the purchase of additional self-powering 9-1-1- cellular relay rescue beacons to mitigate deaths in places where CBP determines are appropriate.
• Add reporting requirements for the NamUS Program regarding the number of unidentified person cases, anthropology cases, suspected border crossing cases and associations made.
• Add reporting requirements for CBP and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on unidentified remains and use of rescue beacons.
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