Many remains are taken back to Texas State University’s campus where the scholars involved with Operation Identification perform different processes to identify individuals.

Scholars at Texas State have identified more than 150 unknown human remains in order to bring their families closure after years of waiting.

In Maverick County, 26 bodies pulled from the Rio Grande were buried, some without attempts to identify them. Teams of Texas State students are trying to learn their names so their families can be notified.

Locating the graves of migrants who died entering the U.S. illegally is the starting point for the grim, often complex task undertaken by Operation Identification at the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University.