The bodies of migrants who die in the waters of the Rio Grande and are found in US territory from now on will be buried after completing the identification process, due to the overflow of bodies in the morgues of Laredo, Texas, reported the Texas volunteer initiative Nicaraguan Community (TNC).
“The order is to bury them immediately because they no longer have capacity, because the smell is already leaving the building (from the morgues) and it is already becoming a problem in the city,” they explained at a press conference.
According to a TNC calculation, until this Friday, August 26, 2022, there were between 198 and 200 bodies of migrants who died in their attempt to cross into the United States. Many of these have not been identified and it is presumed that Nicaraguans are among them.
Likewise, they explain that the bodies of the migrants will be buried once the authorities in charge of rescuing them from the waters of the Rio Grande collect the documentation, fingerprints, data and particular signs that allow their relatives to identify them. Many of these bodies are found in a state of decomposition and therefore represent a public health risk.
This decision will affect the families of the migrants, because they will have to “incur a much higher cost by having to exhume the remains to be able to repatriate them,” said Justin Ochoa, TNC volunteer in the repatriation area.
Five bodies in morgues and 12 missing
The volunteers point out that in the morgues there are bodies of five clearly identified Nicaraguans. Likewise, they have a list of 12 more nationals who are missing, but in the recent visit to the main morgues of the state they were unable to find them.
“In the Laredo state morgue there is a huge number of unidentified bodies and we are not just talking about Nicaraguans, we are talking about all nationalities. The difference that exists with other nationalities is that the consuls are going to the morgue, they are sending emails and they are waiting for the bodies to be identified as soon as possible, those that they consider may be from their country,” they denounce.
The bodies of the migrants that are in the morgue are: Kelvin Tórrez Medina, 22 years old; Carelia Velásquez Selles, 54 years old; José Antonio García Ramírez, of unknown age; Melvin Zelaya Hurtado, 42, and Lester Castillo Jarquín, 28. They all drowned in the waters of the Rio Grande and were reported to the consulate between May 24 and 27.
“On the list of missing people they are practically people who got lost crossing the river. There are only two people who got lost on the way to Mexico. There is one who got lost because he got sick in the head on the way. I do not know what happened to him, only that the coyote reported to his family that he lost his mind and that he could not carry a person who was not oriented, ”he details.
They fear that the consul will not help due to political partisanship
The humanitarian tragedy in Nicaragua is exacerbated because the consular authorities in Texas are unwilling to help with repatriations, TNC members point out. According to the consul of Houston, Texas, Samuel Trejos, he does not follow up on the cases, which has caused there to be bodies already identified in the morgues for three months.
“The (Houston) consulate is handling it in a political way, it is making this a political partisanship and it is not moving because it believes that perhaps they are all people against the government. I don’t know what the problem is, but this has nothing to do with any political party. This is a humanitarian crisis that Nicaragua is going through with respect to the bodies,” says Ochoa.
The volunteer explains that the experience with the bodies found in Mexican territory leads to a more agile process. The authorities of the Nicaraguan Embassy and the Mexican Prosecutor’s Office have collaborated with the repatriation process. Likewise, they have been open to working with organizations such as TNC that provide support to the families of the disappeared. However, in the United States it is not possible.
“Unfortunately, the morgues (from the US) do not want to work independently, they want all the consular documents, they want them through the Nicaraguan consulate, that is something that they told us, that is, the document has to be issued by the consulate ”, they lament.
That is to say, that the TNC can support the family in locating the body with the instances that pick up the bodies, but when a body that was identified by documentation or matches particular signs is found, the family must give the report to the Government so that the consulate makes arrangements with the morgue and the process of identification and subsequent repatriation begins.
“The consulate has to do the process for the body to be handed over, we are talking about the release of the body. They (the consul) have to sign the exit documentation of that body to be delivered to the funeral home; As long as that doesn’t happen, the body doesn’t come out,” they explain.
This process, which should be short, has become extensive for families who have lost their migrant relative. They also explain that another limitation in the identification process is that in Nicaragua there is a record of two fingerprints taken in the identification process. Meanwhile, other countries have records of the ten fingers and this provides greater certainty when identifying the bodies.
40 Nicaraguan migrants died between March and August
The Texas Nicaraguan Community group clarified that they do not carry out the recognition of the bodies, the information they share through their social networks where they report on the appearance of a deceased compatriot comes from the official sheets of the morgues that did their identification work.
This year they have helped repatriate 32 bodies of Nicaraguan migrants, 29 of these were found on the Mexican side and only three on the US side, of the latter two they returned to Nicaragua and one was buried there because he had family there.
Irregular migration to the United States has increased exponentially since July 2021, only in the first seven months of 2022 there have been 96,193 apprehensions of Nicaraguans. However, deaths have also increased. A monitoring of CONFIDENTIAL, reveals that between March and August 2022, 40 Nicaraguans traveling to the United States have died. Among these there are two boys and a girl, four years old. Just like a pregnant woman.
