Putting names with migrants’ bodies is Texas examiner’s macabre mission

LAREDO — The body on the steel table was a Hispanic woman, probably in her 20s, found on an isolated Texas ranch. In the light of a large bay window overlooking scrub brush and mesquite in the shimmering heat, Dr. Corinne Stern quickly determined that the cause of death was exposure. The medical examiner’s next quest was harder: Who is she? After photographing a silver-rimmed tooth, the woman’s blue-and-green striped shirt and an earlobe with three earrings, Stern searched the clothing. She found a wallet-sized photo of a young girl and a scrap of paper with several phone numbers. Wasting no time, Stern left the autopsy suite and summoned one of her Spanish-speaking investigators. She punched a number into her office phone; a man answered, “Bueno.” “I have a young lady in my office and we found your telephone number,” she said. “Are you missing a relative or do you know someone who may have been carrying your phone number?” As the medical examiner for Webb County, a 3,400-square-mile jurisdiction of 262,000 residents in South Texas, Stern works in a grim corner of the national debate over illegal immigration — identifying the dead. Her struggle to put names to the bodies offers a glimpse into how intractable the border crisis is as it strains the services of South Texas counties. Stern, who estimates that the task takes up 25 percent of her office’s resources, is dealing with migrants from at least six countries, confronting bureaucratic and linguistic hurdles all along the way. She has conducted at least 400 autopsies of immigrants since becoming Webb’s medical examiner in 2006. On any given day, Stern plays the role of forensic expert, homicide detective or even diplomat, asking the governments of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and other nations for help in naming the dead and getting their remains home...more