UIndy forensic team to help ID migrants in Texas
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A forensic team of faculty and students from the University of Indianapolis are heading to Texas for a unique opportunity.
They are traveling to Brooks County, Texas, to help identify buried migrants that have been buried in unmarked plots.
Dr. Krista Latham, a UIndy associate professor of biology and anthropology, has led a group to the area since 2013. The team is expected to remove bodies of hundreds of people who died while migrating from Latin America to the United States in the last decade.
In the past, Latham and students have assisted a team in Texas identify the bodies and notify family members of the deaths. The group hopes to reveal the names of more than 100 human remains on this trip.
It’s a brand new experience for five of the six students participating this year.
“This is not only a scientific mission but there also is a moral obligation to this work,” Latham said. “This has turned in to a human rights mission.”
The trip lasts 10 days. The remains had previously been exhumed during an earlier phase of the project.