Group Helping Families Search for Missing Relatives

Volunteers hope to stop people from dying on Brooks County ranches
May 14, 2015

BROOKS COUNTY -The South Texas Human Rights Group is using technology to help reunite families with illegal crossers lost in the brush. The group wants to keep people from dying on ranches in Brooks County, and they want closure for the families of those who died in the brush.

Volunteers are helping with the first objective of keeping people alive. Dozens of water stations are going up on ranches countywide.

To help families, the group is using online tools. “If they've had people disappear down here in the Valley, then we're going to make an effort for them to get their missing person’s report in, get the data uploaded to the national database,” said Eddie Canales.

He said part of the issue is educating families on how to properly report a missing person and document the cases.
Canales and his team are reaching out to Hispanic communities across Texas. ”We just got back from Houston,” he told us, “We served about 30 families, who had missing people that disappeared here.”

It's unclear how many people have died in the ranches of Brooks County. Residents know the numbers are high.
“I've lived here all my life, and it's been going on for years and years,” said one woman, who was afraid to show her face.
She remembered a young girl once flagged down her husband near the family ranch. She said the girl had left her mother’s body in the brush.

“The little girl didn't know where it was,” said the woman. “She was just disorientated. She was hungry. She was thirsty.”
The woman’s husband called for help.

“They went in on horses, they took dogs, they took vehicles and they couldn't find the body until much later,” said the woman. “After a day or so, the buzzards, the animals found it.”

This happened before the South Texas Human Rights Group started adding water stations.

“We are gearing up. It's going to get hotter and hotter and more humid,” said Canales.

The group is planning on doing more outreach in the Hispanic communities of big cities. Right now, they have more than 50 missing people in their database.

They expect to have more than 200 by the end of the summer.

Border Patrol agents said they’re seeing a huge increase in deaths of illegal crossers compared to this time last year. So far, in 2015, agents rescued 378 people and reported 70 deaths since January, compared to 169 rescues and 54 deaths last year.

Those numbers are for the entire Rio Grande Valley sector, not just Brooks County. Border Patrol officials said the increase may be due to having more agents dedicated patrolling. This time last year, they were busy dealing with the surge of unaccompanied children crossing the border.

http://www.krgv.com/news/local-news/...tives/33031866