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Texas scholar’s work to ID immigrant corpses is gratifying -- and sad

Lori Baker, an associate professor of forensic anthropology at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, inventories human remains recovered on a South Texas ranch. Baker has spent the past decade at the building databases and working with Mexican and U.S. authorities to identify the remains of illegal immigrants. There has been a recent increase in such deaths in Texas. deaths.

Lori Baker, an associate professor of forensic anthropology at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, inventories human remains recovered on a South Texas ranch. Baker has spent the past decade at the building databases and working with Mexican and U.S. authorities to identify the remains of illegal immigrants. There has been a recent increase in such deaths in Texas. deaths.   (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

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Forensic anthropologist Lori Baker of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, helps border communities identify the remains of would-be immigrants who die in the rough and dry territory along the border. She says the human toll she sees “hurts my soul,” but the work is also gratifying when it brings closure to families of the victims.

Building a database

Baker works with Baylor senior Jen Husak, 21, left, to inventory and scan images into a computer. Student volunteers are a key part of Baker’s team.   (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

In the field

Urbino “Benny’ Martinez, the chief deputy sheriff in Brooks County, Texas, looks for an identification on the body of a woman in her 20s found on a ranch. No ID was found, but the woman was identified later as a mother from Honduras.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Graves of unknowns

Aluminum signs and artificial flowers mark the graves of unidentified migrants buried in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Falfurrias, Texas.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Telltale signs

A new toothbrush and a bent cattle fence along Highway 281 near Falfurrias, Texas, where smugglers drop off groups of people about a mile south of a Border Patrol checkpoint. Ranchers have all but given up repairing fences.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Identifying immigrant remains

Binders in the Brooks County Sheriff’s Department document details about the bodies found on ranches near Falfurrias, Texas.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Left on trail

A pair of socks most likely dropped by an immigrant entering the U.S. illegally lies on the Arizona side of the porous U.S.-Mexico border fence.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

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