sixty-eight cases from Sacred Heart—including Case #0383—were
transferred to Texas State under the umbrella of a service-learning
program called Operation Identification, or OpID. Kate Spradley,
forty-six, a slim, quiet woman with short brown hair and dark-rimmed
glasses, is the director of OpID. Its goal is to process, identify, and
repatriate the remains of migrants who died in south Texas. As even
more unmarked burials were discovered in Brooks County in 2014
and 2015, Texas State gradually took over the exhumations in Fal-
furrias, which continue to this day.
When a new case arrives at FACTS, it winds down a pitted dirt
road and through a cattle gate surveilled by security cameras to the
loading dock of the program’s multipurpose laboratory building,slowly pull the body bag from the truck’s bed and onto a stiff board,
which they slide onto a gurney and wheel into the building of white
tiled walls and lots of industrial brushed steel.
A large, color-coded dry-erase board lists the stages of processing
bones and helpful tips for the use of maceration chemicals.
Most of the human remains at FACTS are those of donors who
willed their bodies to the school for research, but the OpID cases are
kept in a separate area and handled only for
identification purposes. Spradley and her col-
leagues make every effort to honor each caseif the owner gives them permission. But when something goes
wrong—a dizzy spell, a sprained ankle—there’s no one there to
help. The migrants themselves often don’t know how far they’ll
have to walk until there’s no turning back.
Over the years, as easier, more populated crossing points were choked
off with physical barriers and tighter enforcement, a quiet, unremark-
able corner of the American South became the nation’s “second bor-
der,” where migrants began dying in shocking numbers. The Border
Patrol called this strategy “prevention through deterrence.”
AFTER HIS REMOVAL from Sacred Heart, Case #0383 was driven to
San Marcos, Texas, a trip that ended at the Freeman Ranch, a sprawl-
ing, thirty-five-hundred-acre farm complex where J. Edgar Hoover
reportedly liked to hunt. Now it houses the Forensic Anthropology
Center at Texas State University (known as FACTS). The center has
two main components, the Forensic Anthropology Research Facil-
ity (FARF), where researchers study the process of human decom-
position in a range of outdoor environments, and the Osteology and
Research Processing Laboratory (ORPL), which is devoted to the
analysis and identification of human remains. At twenty-six acres,
FARF is the largest out-
door decomposition fa-
cility, more commonly
known as a body farm, in
the world.
Forty-five of the first
1994 1997 2002 2007 2009
RESTING PLACES
(A) Zaira Gonzalez had the coordinates
where her brother’s remains were found tattooed
on her arm; it would take the family more than
a year to pay for a headstone. (B) Officials log the
remains of a man who died crossing the border
near Falfurrias. (C) The area designated for
decomposition at the Forensic Anthropology
Research Facility. (D) Christian played varsity
soccer at Palestine High School.The
BORDER
andCHRISTIAN
GONZALEZ:
A TIMELINE
The Clinton
administration establishes
the U. S. Border Patrol’s
“prevention through
deterrence” strategy.The Gonzalez
family migrates
to the U. S. from
Mexico.The Homeland Security
Act is passed, creating U. S.
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE).2008: Barack Obama is elected
president. In the first year of his
administration, 393,000 people are
deported from the U. S.Christian
graduates from
high school.Christian is charged
with aggravated assault
after an incident
with an air rifle.ABCD