Kristian Hernandez is a reporter for The Monitor covering crime and immigration. He’s originally from El Paso, TX, but he’s been living in McAllen for two years. In that time, he’s twice discovered the bodies of people who had crossed the border illegally. Both times, sources informed him that there was a dead body, and gave him a description of where to look. And, both times, Hernandez says he informed law enforcement agents, who did not go out to search for the bodies.
So he did.
And in both cases, Hernandez found them, and called law enforcement to pick them up. Since then, he says, Border Patrol has launched the “Missing Migrant” initiative in the Rio Grande Valley – to recover and identify the bodies of migrants who entered the country illegally.
But Hernandez says the experience forever changed how he sees the border and the attitude some here have toward migrant deaths. “There’s very little… compassion when it comes to understanding that these migrants are people just like you and I,” he says. “They’re someone’s mother, someone’s father, someone’s brother or sister. And I think, maybe because all of this that’s been surrounding the talk about the border, I think it’s pushed people to think that way, or feel that way… [to feel] so separated from that reality that these are human beings and that their death is the same as anyone’s death.“
- Ravenna, Samantha & Lulu
(Photo: NPR/ Samantha Balaban)
