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 Update: Senator Juan Hinojosa has called for an investigation into the discovery. He and the district attorney are meeting this week to file a formal request with the Texas Department of Public Safety. “These people deserve a proper investigation and a proper burial,” he said. A separate inquiry by local authorities is currently underway. 
 
 Researchers have uncovered a series of mass graves in south Texas containing the bodies of scores of unidentified migrants. Exhuming 52 plots in the Sacred Heart Burial Park in Falfurrias, anthropologists found the remains of multiple individuals who had been stuffed into garbage, shopping and body bags and dumped into crowded graves. 
 
 The discovery was made by professors and students from the University of Indianapolis and Baylor University, who are working on a multi-year project to identify the bodies of undocumented migrants who died while crossing the border into the United States. They disinterred 110 corpses with little fanfare in 2013, and made this latest grisly find when they resumed work two weeks ago, according to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Volunteers from the University of Indianapolis and Baylor University discovered the mass graves. University of Indianapolis/Guy Housewright 
 
 Some bones and decomposed bodies were simply dumped straight into the dirt, while multiple skulls were found inside biohazard bags that had been placed between the scant few coffins. Due to the haphazard nature of the burials, officials haven’t yet determined how many bodies were found at the site. 
 
 “To me it’s just as shocking as the mass grave that you would picture in your head, and it’s just as disrespectful,” Krista Latham, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Indianapolis, told the newspaper. 
 
 The remains were buried in the Brooks County-owned section of the cemetery by funeral home Funeraria del Angel Howard-Williams, which was bought in 1999 by Service Corporation International. County officials have been paying Howard-Williams $450 for each migrant body it buries—most of them were recovered from the surrounding desert—for 16 years. The individuals discovered in the mass graves are believed to have been buried there between 2005 and 2009. The bodies of approximately 120 migrants are found in Brooks County each year. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Unidentified bones were stuffed into a Dignity Memorial gift bag and placed among other remains. Baylor University 
 
 When Baylor anthropologist Lori Baker approached the funeral home for documents pertaining to the plots, directors claimed to have none. However, Jennifer McDunn, a spokesperson for Service Corporation International, told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that it does have some records, “but this does not amount to confirmation that Howard-Williams was involved in depositing the remains in the manner the researchers described.” The company is refusing to release the documents. 
 
 “Because of the sensitive nature of our business, it is not our general practice to share our records publicly, no matter the decedent or the family we serve,” McDunn said. “I do want to let you know it is our policy to treat the decedent with care, to treat them just like we would treat anyone else.” 
 
 Beyond the clear moral transgression, insufficiently recorded mass graves are illegal. The Texas Health and Safety Code states that information regarding burials, including dates, locations and names, must be kept on file. That responsibility falls to the owner of the cemetery. However, complaints about wrongdoing are usually made by family members—an issue when it comes to unidentified migrants, whose families have no way of knowing where they ended up. 
 
 Immigrant rights advocate Eddie Canales says situations like this result from the belief that it’s acceptable to view migrants as second-class. “I think it’s very hard for people to connect…the fact that these were human beings,” he says. “It just goes to the language, to the words, and words mean a lot: ‘All these were illegals.’ …Even in death, they wound up not getting the proper respect.” ||||| FALFURRIAS - Unidentified migrants who died entering the United States were buried in mass graves in a South Texas cemetery, with remains found in trash bags, shopping bags, body bags, or no containers at all, researchers discovered. 
 
 In one burial, bones of three bodies were inside one body bag. In another instance, at least five people in body bags and smaller plastic bags were piled on top of each other, Baylor University anthropologist Lori Baker said. Skulls were found in biohazard bags — like the red plastic bags in receptacles at doctors’ offices — placed between coffins. 
 
 “To me it’s just as shocking as the mass grave that you would picture in your head, and it’s just as disrespectful,” said Krista Latham, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Indianapolis. 
 
 Bodies that were not already skeletonized before burial were found in varying states of decomposition, Baker said. 
 
 The bodies are believed to have been buried by a local funeral home since 2005 in the Sacred Heart Burial Park in Brooks County. 
 
 The discovery came in the last two weeks as the pair of anthropologists and their students continued an all-volunteer, multiyear effort to identify migrants who have died of exposure while evading Border Patrol checkpoints in remote South Texas, where temperatures reach more than 100 degrees in the summer and there is little water and shade. Hundreds of people have died in just the last few years in Brooks County alone, where the discovery of the mass graves was made in the county-owned portion of the cemetery in Falfurrias. 
 
 The researchers and their students exhumed remains of 110 unidentified people from the cemetery in 2013. This summer they performed 52 exhumations, but more than 52 people were buried in those spaces. Because remains were commingled, and not all of the body bags were opened on-site, further study will be needed to determine the number of people recovered, Baker said. 
 
 The researchers expect to return next year to exhume more remains. 
 
 The mass graves are yet another sign of U.S. immigration systems and policies overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and of their difficulty coping with the humanitarian aspects of illegal migration. Since October, the nation has struggled to house and process record numbers of minors fleeing civil and political unrest in Central America, many traveling alone. Migrants from Central America travel north along freight train lines in Mexico, leading to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and on to Brooks County. 
 
 There, they set out on foot across rugged, remote, privately owned ranchlands, often led by guides associated with criminal gangs or left to find their way to the next highway north of the checkpoint, a 30-mile trek, or even longer for the lost. 
 
 FUNERAL HOME PAID 
 
 County officials said they paid the local funeral home, Funeraria del Angel Howard-Williams to handle the bodies after sheriff’s officials recovered them from the brush country. County Judge Raul Ramirez said that was the practice for at least 16 years. 
 
 A smaller number of migrants die in neighboring Jim Hogg County. It has paid Howard-Williams to handle bodies for as long as Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Lorenzo Benavides can remember — at least 22 years, he said. The funeral home buried the Jim Hogg County remains in the Brooks County cemetery, he said. 
 
 The funeral home currently charges $450 to handle each body, Brooks County Chief Deputy Benny Martinez said. 
 
 Researchers found remains under small, temporary grave markers bearing the Howard-Williams name, Baker said. 
 
 A kitchen garbage bag containing bones was tucked inside a gift bag emblazoned with a logo featuring the word “Dignity,” Baker said, indicating one of the funeral service brands owned by Howard-Williams’ parent company, Houston-based Service Corporation International. The company acquired Howard-Williams in 1999, spokeswoman Jessica McDunn said. 
 
 A funeral home official declined to comment, instead referring questions to McDunn. 
 
 “No matter if this is one of our client families we serve on a traditional basis or a migrant family’s loved one we’re serving and we don’t have any identification of the loved one, I do want to let you know it is our policy to treat the decedent with care, to treat them just like we would treat anyone else,” McDunn said. 
 
 Baker said the funeral home indicated it had no records when the researchers approached Howard-Williams before exhuming bodies. 
 
 McDunn said in an email that the funeral home has “certain records related to these burials, but this does not amount to confirmation that Howard-Williams was involved in depositing the remains in the manner the researchers described.” 
 
 The funeral home would not give the Caller-Times access to the records. 
 
 “Because of the sensitive nature of our business, it is not our general practice to share our records publicly, no matter the decedent or the family we serve,” McDunn said. 
 
 REGULATION VARIES 
 
 Burials in Texas are governed by an array of laws and agencies, depending on the type of burial and the type
– The task was hard enough, even without complications: Forensic anthropologists were trying to identify the remains of migrants who perished in remote South Texas while trying to cross from Mexico into the US. Many of those remains ended up in a cemetery in Falfurrias, and when the volunteers made 52 exhumations, they expected to find 52 corpses. Instead, as the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports, they found many more—but they can't say for sure given the state of burial. They discovered remains jammed into trash bags, shopping bags, and body bags; bones from multiple bodies inside the same bags; and some remains without any containers whatsoever. In short, it looked more like a dump than a cemetery, they say. “To me it’s just as shocking as the mass grave that you would picture in your head, and it’s just as disrespectful,” says one of the anthropologists, from the University of Indianapolis. The remains are in a Brooks County cemetery, and the county pays the Funeraria del Angel Howard-Williams funeral home $450 per body to handle burials. The funeral home has “certain records related to these burials, but this does not amount to confirmation that Howard-Williams was involved in depositing the remains in the manner the researchers described," says a spokesperson. Vocativ picks up on this aspect of the story: Complaints about improper burials often originate from the families of the deceased, "an issue when it comes to unidentified migrants, whose families have no way of knowing where they ended up." (Brooks County has seen a big increase in illegal immigrants trying to cross the border in recent years.)