Border Crisis Tag

The news is full of stories and interviews detailing the failure of the Obama Administration to enforce immigration law, the cost to taxpayers because of this failure, and what this means for the state of electoral politics in the run up to November. None of these stories, however, address the human element of what Texans are dealing with every single day. Women like Doctor Corrine Stern, who serves as a medical examiner in Webb County, Texas, sees every day the brutal consequences of an Administration who refuses to enforce the law. Bloomberg News has published a searing exposé of what it truly means to cede power to lawlessness. Doctor Stern's jurisdiction covers the vast border lands surrounding Laredo, where she spends at least 25% of her office's resources in the examination and identification of the abandoned 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’s 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.

Journalists and pundits tend to focus on the costs of apprehending, housing, evaluating, and deporting illegal immigrants, but the real story--and a good portion of the real scandal--lies in how much time and effort American doctors and other officials spend in either repatriating or laying to rest the bodies of those who die during ill-fated border crossings.