Guiding Principle

Death will not have the final word

Mass being held in the Growler Valley of the Sonoran Desert.

In an address to the Jesuits, Pope Leo said, “…the Church needs you at the frontiers, whether they be geographical, cultural, intellectual or spiritual. These are places of risk, where familiar maps are no longer sufficient.” Our friend Jaret heard this call, and began coordinating other Jesuit priests and seminarians to join us on extended searches in the desert. He had worked in Nogales, Mexico for several years at a migrant refugee center and had volunteered with the Battalion during those years. Jaret received support from his superiors to help fund these young men to join us at the borderlands, the frontier. We led a backpacking search in the remote regions of Arizona where the 11 Jesuits plus James and I found eight sites with human remains on our one day of searching.

Prior to this intensive undertaking, the Jesuits had prepared themselves emotionally and spiritually for what they might find by attending Zoom meetings with a professor and priest from Boston College. Father Alejandro wanted the men to consider why they wanted to search for missing and deceased migrants – for safety seekers – and what were their deepest desires. Reflecting on this, I knew that I wanted to be of service, to be helpful to others, for my ESL students, and because no one else was doing what we did. I wanted to stand up for compassion in the world. By doing these searches and talking about them to groups and to the media, I was helping to bring the situation to light. I wanted to give these lost lives dignity.

The Jesuits hiking out after the search.

Alejandro spoke about how the Jesuits would be walking the same trails as the safety seekers; we would be in their footprints accompanying them on their journeys. He said that our efforts were to make sure that death will not have the final word.

Yes. Yes. That resonated throughout me. It feels like a rescue when we find remains. I see you. I will not let you be left in the desert to be covered by sand, to be dragged down animal burrows, to deteriorate into tiny fragments. Even if identification isn’t possible for many of the remains we find, we helped put these deceased persons on a map where their lives will be recorded. A dot will appear on the Migrant Mortality Map which provides a record of the deaths on U.S. soil. I want to make the United States see that these persons died here. We might not admit that the decades-old immigration policies such as Prevention through Deterrence caused their deaths, but at least these persons would not just disappear under the shifting desert sands. They would be counted and added to the tens of thousands who had also lost their lives here.

The Arizona Migrant Mortality Map. Each dot represents a lost life.

Locating these human remains documents that a living person passed this way, they traversed this path beside these arroyos and mountains, around these seemingly endless hills. They were here. They crossed here. They died here. They mattered. They will not be forgotten. Death will not have the final word.

Written by Abbey Carpenter, co-leader of the Battalion Search and Rescue.