http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_4123060

Article Launched: 8/02/2006 12:00 AM

Boy pulls mother's body across NM desert

Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
El Paso Times

A 13-year-old boy dragged his dead mother's body through the desert to find help after she collapsed near Sunland Park last week in one of the most harrowing tales of immigrant distress in recent memory, officials of the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Mexican Consulate in El Paso said.
The boy, Julio Hernández, was reunited this week in Juárez with 21-year-old sister Maribel Hernández, who took him home to Central Mexico, consulate officials said.

The remains of their mother, Adela Hernández, 46, were at still at the Albuquerque morgue Tuesday. She appeared to have died of dehydration or exposure to heat.

Officials of the Sunland Park Police Department said a resident called the police Thursday afternoon about a body behind the Santa Teresa Immediate Care Center at 5055 McNutt. Adela Hernández was pronounced dead at the scene. Border Patrol agents arrived quickly enough to arrest three men who were part of the same smuggling group as the Hernandezes and who were trying to flee.

Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said the group had been "sizable."

ICE investigators in Las Cruces are looking for the group's smugglers, who face enhanced smuggling charges because their actions resulted in a death, officials said. They would not say whether the smugglers are on the Mexican or on the U.S. side of the border.

Mosier said that several people dragged Adela Hernández's body to get help, but Socorro Cordova, spokeswoman for the consulate in El Paso, said Julio was on his own.

"He was all alone carrying her for ways to ask for help," she said. "This is a real tragedy."

Cordova's office took custody of the minor before turning him over to a government shelter for abandoned children in Juárez, where he waited for his sister.

Cordova said Adela Hernández and her son were on their way to meet her husband, who lived in the United States -- possibly in Florida -- as an undocumented immigrant. Cordova said the mother and son did not plan on staying in the United States but on talking the husband into returning to Mexico.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.com; 546-6131.