A Backlog of Bodies at the US-Mexico Border

Alexandra Villarreal, The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2022

"Along the US-Mexico border, overwhelmed mortuaries in Eagle Pass, Texas, have been forced to stockpile a “backlog of bodies” in a city-owned refrigerated truck. The local government bought but never used the makeshift morgue amid the Covid-19 pandemic, when such desperate sights were not unheard of in various parts of the US, including Texas. Yet in recent weeks, the truck has come to embody a renewed abundance of death in the border town with a population of roughly 29,000, deployed as a stark stopgap measure to keep bodies preserved before they can go to an overworked medical examiner, the Eagle Pass fire chief, Manuel Mello III, told the Guardian. ... [I]n Eagle Pass, locals like Rosalinda Medrano who have lived for decades along a porous border understand that migrants have and will always come or, increasingly, die trying. “Even though there’s one fence, and another fence, and so many troopers, and the national guard, and you name it – Border Patrol, here and there and everywhere – it’s not gonna stop these families,” she said, adding simply: “They want a better life.”