Among hundreds of unknown migrant remains, a constant search for clues

Behind the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office sits a trailer full of bones. Medical Examiner Dr. Gregory Hess says it includes roughly 600 sets of skeletal remains.

“We’re curating human remains, rather than destroying them,” he said. “We identify someone out of this collection maybe once every month or two. So it’s not infrequent. However, we’re adding more remains than we’re releasing.”

Hess believes nearly all of the remains — roughly 90% — are foreign nationals who died crossing the desert.

Some sets of remains are more complete than others. The bones can help the staff piece together a person’s height, age or gender.

They also cut samples from bones to generate a DNA profile. But even DNA testing is no guarantee of a positive ID.

“Many migrants, their DNA is not in some kind of U.S. database sitting around that would allow us to make some kind of blind comparison,” Hess explained.

Unless loved ones get in contact with the office and offer DNA for a direct comparison, there’s little chance of a match.

“These are people that died on the surface of the desert,” Hess said while looking through one set of remains. “The bones were not buried. Otherwise they wouldn’t turn white like this. And they’re just here waiting for some kind of DNA clue someday.”

What’s left behind in their pockets can be an even better clue, or sometimes a frustrating dead end.

Jon Perra/KGUN

In the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office, re-purposed gym lockers house personal property dating back to 2018. That sometimes means multiple forms of ID, cell phones and photos. Other times, there’s very little to go off of, like a single, empty wallet.

The medical staff does detective work, too, including contacting another country’s consulate to try to find a person’s family.

“People use fake identifications,” Hess explained. “They use aliases sometimes, for different reasons… Where is family? Are they gonna answer phones? Can their government get a hold of them? Do they trust their government?”

Hess says the work load has been steady since about 2000, through each of the past few presidents and immigration policies.

“Every year we get somewhere between 150 to 200 remains,” he said. “Pretty much directly related to how hot and dry it is.”

The team here tries their best to at least give these unidentified immigrants their names back.

Soon, the team will move to a new Pima Medical Examiner’s building just south of the current office near Country Club and Ajo Way.

It will house one, larger cooler for post-mortem remains instead of two to three separate coolers, along with a larger room for skeletal remains. It will also include more space for exams and administration.

Hess clarifies the process to move into a new building has been going on for 12 years, and that the need comes from general growth over time, not from one specific kind of death.

The new Medical Examiner’s Office is expected to open this fall.