Binational Migration Institute

The Tucson Festival of Books is just around the corner! Stop by and join MAS faculty, Anna Ochoa O'Leary and Raquel Rubio- Goldsmith, as they discuss immigration policy and migrant deaths in the borderlands.

http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/32846-finding-sacagawea-in-el-salvador

Finding Sacagawea in El Salvador In El Salvador, dollar coins, including the Presidential one dollar coins are even more common than the bill.

Robin Reineke, a member of the BMI research team, co-founded the Missing Migrant Project, featured this month on the University of Arizona website. Robin has done an immense amount of work to associate the unidentified migrant dead with their names and identities, allowing them to be reunited with their families, and thus, giving closure to the people who had been searching for their loved ones.

“I am honored to do this work. The unidentified are here in Tucson. I feel an obligation to them. Knowing this is happening an hour or two hours’ drive from your home is unsettling. It is happening right here, right now. I wish more people felt disturbed by this crisis of humanity.” ~Robin Reineke

Naming the Dead | The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona It’s known as the “corridor of death” – that parched stretch of desert in Southern Arizona where migrants from Central and Latin America attempt to cross in freezing winters and searing summers. Since 2001 more than 2,000 bodies of illegal border crossers have been found and brought to the Pima Coun...

Data collected by the Missing Migrant Project, co-founded by BMI's Robin Reineke, is being crosschecked to identify the bodies of undocumented migrants that have recently been exhumed from anonymous graves in Brooks County, Texas... At this point, 63 bodies were exhumed, "some... buried in plain wooden coffins; others were thrown unceremoniously into the dirt in body bags."

http://www.indystar.com/article/BG/20130621/LIFE02/306210030/UIndy-professor-students-help-identify-bodies-migrants-trying-enter-U-S-from-Mexico

UIndy professor, students help identify bodies of migrants trying to enter U.S. from Mexico Krist Latham, a University of Indianapolis professor, and four graduate students are part of a team trying to identify the remains of people who died trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico.