Esquire USA - 10.2019

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 case

if 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

and

CHRISTIAN

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.

A

B

C

D