Over the years, I have been asked this question many times because of my volunteer work with the Battalion Search and Rescue. Though I still don’t like the focus being on me rather than the situation that prompts the question, I understand that it is coming from a place of concern for my emotional health. Usually I am not overwhelmed by what we see. When we search, I am focused on the others, the lives lost, their families left wondering and grieving and perhaps also hoping. My care is outward. At times when I slow down and see our work from an outside perspective, I can acknowledge that what we witness – the truly abhorrent reality of finding human remains lying on the desert sand – could be having an effect on me, and it might be wise to address it.

I believe in the importance of what we are doing. When no government agency is searching for distressed or deceased safety seekers, it feels vital that we do. When I am on a search and we find human remains, it feels like such critical work. I carry the hope of the soul being repatriated to their family, but even if that is not possible, part of the work is to make the U.S. acknowledge the number of deaths our lack of immigration policies are causing. This belief in the work has the ability to bolster me through some of the death sites.

My fellow searchers bring me comfort and care. We have developed true friendships searching side-by-side over the months and years. The things we have witnessed create a bonding of sorts. Also, knowing that they and so many others are working on immigration issues from different angles, provides a web of support that helps sustain me.

I share a lot with my friends who help me tremendously. I’m careful not to provide the heartbreaking details, but enough so they can recognize the emotions such sights evoke. I also benefit from a therapist from time to time. Additionally, I care for myself through writing about my experiences, about what we witness. Being able to express myself in writing helps me to slow the thoughts and emotions swirling through my head enough to articulate them in journal writing, essays, and books. Thank you, dear reader, for being here with me.

Not to be left off the list is the distraction of entering into other worlds through books. From non-fiction in the area of immigration (Border Afterlives, How to Close a Camp, Crossing the Line, The Case for Open Borders…), to spiritual study (The Spiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram, Start Where You Are, The Nature of Personal Reality…) to fiction, modern and classic (The Plover, Prophet Song, The Overstory, Red at the Bone, The Awakening…), reading can transport me by the shear beauty of a well-crafted sentence.

And nature. Nature heals. I hike for pleasure with friends or alone and what I move through helps ground me with its beauty and majesty. I kept a list of some of the wonders I saw on a recent hike: seagull lily, wild onion, lemon drops, Indian paintbrush, salmon flax, verbena, yucca in bloom, claret cup, and desert primrose (thanks to my hiking buddy for naming so many). And my special love, birds: turkey vultures, rock wren, Bewick’s wren, raven, scrub jay, spotted towhee, chickadees, bushtits, bridled titmouse, downy woodpecker, and Northern flicker. Look at the abundance!

And dirt under my nails has always been a form of self-care. There is an awe-filling joy in putting a seed in the ground and having it grow and produce food. It’s a miracle! The time spent tending my garden returns me to the physical world where the earth sustains and nurtures us. There is solace in the soil.

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

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After the Battalion’s search last month for distressed and deceased migrants, we drove to the border wall on a public street through an industrial park. We had been there many times in the past to show reporters and documentarians the wall. It had been several months since I was there, and I was shocked to see that the government had built a second even taller wall paralleling the first. While James was being interviewed by the journalist, I spoke into my voice recorder and while listening to it this week, I heard true anguish in my voice. I don’t think I have the writerly chops to describe how awful it was to see this double wall with the new one even higher than the original 30 foot one. Here’s what I recorded: This is so upsetting to see the double wall. It’s so upsetting. They have to cross this wall twice. There’s no humanity. There’s no big heartedness, no generosity, no welcome. So much waste, so much money. It’s so tall.

We used to drive the border wall road and push gallons of water through the bollards, often directly into the hands of safety seekers waiting to cross. They would open the gallon bottle and immediately begin chugging the water. Many had been traveling for weeks or months to get to this location and were thirsty, hungry, and weak. One hot summer afternoon last year we came upon two women and a little girl, about 8-years-old, who were on the U.S. side of the wall, huddled in a sliver of shade. They had been abandoned by their guide and had nowhere to turn to for help in completing their journey from El Salvador. There is a heartbreaking story here which will be in my upcoming book, but for this essay, what was especially distressing was the mother saying that if they were deported and had to try again, there was no way she could make her daughter cross that wall again. And now it was two walls.

I was raised by a carpenter and am comfortable walking around on the roof of a house, but even I am intimidated by the sheer height of the wall, even the shorter 30-foot one. The rust-red metal bollards are evenly spaced with a narrow, three-foot tall piece of metal at the top. I knew people climbed up a rope-and-PVC-pipe ladder and climbed down another one on the other side, if they were lucky. Sometimes they are told to just shimmy down, and many fall. In 2019 the chief of the San Diego sector of the border patrol reportedly said that the agency conducted psychological field tests to find the height at which an ordinary person becomes disoriented, and it was 18-22 feet. I will leave you to make the connections with this and the chosen height of the wall.

As Gabriella Soto asks in her excellent book, Border Afterlives¹, “Do people fully understand that looming underneath the language of border security is the promise of violence?” (312) Also, she writes about “…the intentionality by which undocumented border crossers are corralled into ‘hostile terrain’ with the objective that such environs exert a deterrent physical ‘cost’ on their persons.” (218) ‘Hostile terrain’ and ‘cost’ are actual words used in the government’s 1994 Prevention through Deterrence policy. You can see this ‘cost’ as the red dots directly below the wall on the Migrant Mortality Maps, documenting hundreds of deaths. [Links to the maps are here: Humane Borders map and El Paso Sector map]

We are no longer allowed to drive on the sixty-foot-wide dirt road – the Roosevelt Reservation – that runs along the entire wall. In addition to not being able to provide water to desperately thirsty persons, we can no longer search this area for human remains. These deceased persons will most likely remain unfound, their families left wondering about their loved ones, and the actual number of deaths inaccurately low.

Others are writing about and fighting against the environmental damage caused by the construction of more wall. The government is blasting these mountains, bulldozing heritage groves of trees, carving in wide roads, and drawing down water levels by drilling wells for water used to make concrete for the foundation. Contractors are getting rich, including Runyan Construction which is fabricating thousands of sections of the wall in my town of Silver City. The wall prevents and disrupts the passage and natural migration routes of animals who need to move to look for water, food, mates, and habitat: jaguar, coyote, ocelot, bobcat, fox, bear, badger, javelina, antelope, deer, and desert tortoise.

I’ll close with an unattributed quote from a mural in Ajo, Arizona: Migration, for all living creatures, is a move from scarcity toward plenty…from despair toward hope. Humans have their own migratory impulse based on the same fundamental desire coded within all living things: survival.

Written by Abbey Carpenter, co-leader of the Battalion Search and Rescue with appreciation to Gabriella Soto.

¹Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting, Gabriella Soto, The University of Arizona Press, 2026

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This week, Cesár with the Armadillos, a California-based search group that searches for specific missing persons, reached out to James with recovery coordinates from a Pima County (Arizona) Office of the Medical Examiner case file from February 2025. He asked James a simple question: “Was this your team?” James went back through our emails and records and found that, yes, we had been searching that exact weekend in that area of the Growler Valley. The coordinates from the Medical Examiner matched ours.

Cesár texted back sharing that his group had searched for this missing young man twice before. He was from deep in Mexico, Chiapas, and Cesár had even spoken with the young man’s mother in 2022. The DNA from the remains we found matched what was on file and the young man was finally identified.

Usually we never learn what happens to the remains and personal effects we locate after we call the local authorities and send in our reports. This is not the purpose of our work, and yet I often wonder if the person was identified and if the families ever learned what happened to their missing loved ones. But here it was, years later, and a connection was made. At last, this family knows and their querido will be going home. Cesár sent us a photograph of the deceased young man which prompted a bittersweet sadness to well up in me to be mingled with the sense of happiness I had experienced when I learned that we had helped this family. Here was a smile, a connection I felt through his eyes, which personalized the skull and remains we had found. Recently I read about law enforcement officers who choose not to look at a deceased person’s identification, if it was found near the remains. It humanizes the remains and can cause a profound grief.

We were a small group of six searchers on that February 2025 search, conducting a general search, and we found 10 sites of human remains on that weekend. I think this warrants repeating: A group of six searchers found 10 sites of human remains. This is all the more upsetting because of the remoteness and vastness of the Growler Valley located in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. If such a small group could find so many sites over one weekend, how many others are still out there? The valley is ten miles wide by sixty miles long from the border with Mexico to Interstate Eight to the north. It has steep sides with tall jagged mountain ranges on both sides; there is no easy escape. Temperatures can range from below freezing at night in the winter to well over 100 degrees during the day in summer. Where a person has to get to is so far away and seems to never get any closer as you move. I have only hiked a small portion of this journey, and yet I, too, sensed that seemingly endless struggle of putting one foot in front of the other. It creates a sense of hopelessness, the unfathomable distances, this place where dreams and lives are lost. Why would someone choose this route? It is for poor persons; it is the least expensive route because the chances of success are so slim and the risks so great.

This is why we do the work we do. Every search matters to us. Every person matters. We remind our volunteers that even if we don’t find remains on a search, we laid down a good track, a tight grid pattern. We were careful and conscientious. We believe that on this date at this location, no remains were overlooked and left behind. We searched to the best of our abilities.

We believe that no one should remain forgotten.

When James notified our searchers about the identification of the remains we found, one of the volunteers replied, “It is complicated to put into words but it makes me feel both sad and yet lighter in my heart.” I so agree. We rescued these remains, this person, from being buried by the desert sands, from being drug down an animal’s burrow. Death will not have the final word in this young man’s case and his family may have a small measure of peace. This is an incredibly tender feeling for me. Of the ninety-plus sites with human remains that I have witnessed in the past three years, only three had some form of identification with them. Now I know that others, like this man from Chiapas, may also be identified and sent home to their waiting family members.

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

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The Battalion’s Not Forgotten Project, Para las madres ended about a month ago and yet images from those six days of searching continue to pop into my mind. Of course, there are the tragic death sites we located that make my shoulders droop and a big puff of air go rushing out. At those times, I try to bring myself back to the present moment which is usually a beautiful place – my garden, porch, with friends, on a hike – and allow those images to fade. I’m glad to be able to help with this important work that we do, but it can follow me into my non-searching life at times.

But there are other sweeter memories that come to mind and bring an automatic smile to my heart. After one of our search days in June, James and I treated ourselves to lunch at Carlos’s Bakery rather than eat at our Airbnb from a stash of food I had made ahead and brought with us. The bakery is part store with a few shelves of canned goods, snacks, and even 5-gallon buckets of paint stacked up, and part bakery with two cases on the right of the room. At the back of the business is a buffet where an older woman makes burritos to order from a long heat-table with a dozen different types of hot ingredients. James and I stood in line trying to peek into the various containers as she lifted the metal lids to scoop out ingredients for the customers ahead of us. Our choices are usually limited because we don’t eat meat, but we had plenty to choose from there. While waiting, I, of course, practiced my Spanish in my head. I always feel a bit more anxious when I am speaking in front of a number of native Spanish speakers, rather than to a single person. When we were about to pay for our food – un burro de calabacitas for James y un de rajas for me – the woman behind me tapped my arm and asked what our shirts meant.

We were still in our hiking pants and shirts which were growing stiff as the sweat dried in the air conditioned room. James had imprinted the back of both of our shirts with a large transfer of Las Buscadoras and a small one on the front pocket. Occasionally in the past, someone has asked about it but never a complete stranger, a Spanish speaker at that. In my big dusty boots I towered over the slight, middle aged woman as I explained what our group did, that we searched for the lost but not forgotten in the desert. Her face erupted in a big smile and she thanked us both so emphatically and warmly. James and I were not from this community and were surrounded by possible family members of those we searched for. Her gratitude felt incredibly special and I was happy to be a small part of this world.

A few days later when we returned for an early-morning baked good treat, the man serving us also asked what Las Buscadoras was. He, too, was profuse in his appreciation for our efforts. I loved the connection and support that came unbidden from this community.

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

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I have been working on writing a narrative non-fiction book about my work with the Battalion Search and Rescue. The multiple drafts have been written in three studios over two states. The manuscript is now holding steady at 203 pages and when I carry it from my home up to my current studio, its weight gives me a sense of pride at having created another book. I have gone through many revisions (7? 8? 9?) and have received editorial guidance from beta readers as well as paid professionals, and yet I know there will be more changes to come. I’m willing. It’s part of the process.

With The Tortilla Star, I sent queries directly to small publishing houses that accepted “unagented” submissions, and the book was accepted and published. With this current manuscript, Not Forgotten, I am seeking representation from a literary agent with the hopes that they can place it with a larger publisher. I want the reality of migrant deaths to reach a wider audience. For the past several months I have been sending out queries to agents – I am up to 117 with 19 nice passes plus one very positive pass and one difficult one. Three agents have asked to see the entire manuscript, and one has asked for a full proposal. It’s a good thing that I have an inner bookkeeper who loves to create and track spreadsheets. (Sadly, see earlier Substack essay titled Kindred Spirit which is about creating a spreadsheet to track migrant deaths.) After determining if an agent represents the type of book I’ve written – narrative non-fiction – I have to identify the varied components of each agent’s submission requirements: a query letter, synopsis, a one-sentence pitch, the back cover paragraph, my author bio, comparable books to what I’ve written, the audience for the book, my marketing plan/platform/website, a chapter-by-chapter summary, and occasionally sample pages – 5…10…20…the first chapter…the first three chapters… They all request something different submitted via different platforms.

Dear reader, if you know of an agent who might be a fit for this work, please let me know. Here is the one sentence pitch for the manuscript: In a searing journey through the deserts of the Southwest borderlands, a determined woman and passionate man ignite a powerful partnership, redefining humanitarian search and rescue work as they bear witness to the heartbreak, injustice, and silent tragedies scattered on the desert sands.

And the tentative back cover copy: For the past two years Abbey Carpenter and James Holeman have spent at least one weekend a month searching the borderlands of Arizona and New Mexico for distressed and deceased migrants where their teams have discovered more than ninety sites with human remains. Not Forgotten is her first-hand experience of the work of the Battalion Search and Rescue, the remarkable humanitarian volunteers they lead, and their solemn witnessing of the deadly consequences of government immigration policies. Abbey shares her joy, anger, and grief at finding deceased persons on U.S. public lands in their unrelenting efforts to help families receive some peace and to ensure that death does not have the final word. The story is told through engaging storytelling and is filled with heartfelt insights into the world of safety seekers and the immigration system. Not Forgotten carries the reader along into the hidden aftermath of migrant disappearance in the beautiful Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts.

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

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Dora Rodriguez was unable to participate in our week of activities at the border for the Not Forgotten Project because she was in El Salvador presenting the newly released Spanish edition of her memoir, Dora: A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain. She was seeking safety from the civil war in El Salvador when she crossed the border into the United States in 1980 and nearly lost her life in the Sonoran Desert. She miraculously survived when 13 others in her group of 26 died, and she has become a tireless humanitarian working directly with safety seekers. She has also become a role model for so many of us working for immigrant rights.

I was honored to have Dora ask me to co-write her memoir. The writing process gave me an in-depth look into the situation that caused her to flee for her life. Our interviews provided an intimate understanding of her evolution to becoming such a force for good in the humanitarian community. I loved being drawn into her world. My friendship with her continues to enrich my life as well as show an alterative way to work with the many strong personalities in non-profit work.

I dug through my box of old photos and found this black and white shot of me with a group of fellow islanders who traveled from Whidbey Island to downtown Seattle in 1980 to protest the war that Dora was fleeing from. I am a few years older than Dora so must have been around 21 when the picture was taken. I love thinking of our connection going back that far. I love feeling the bond that started so many decades ago that has linked our lives together. Sadly, also, when I look at this photo, I think about others who are still fleeing terrible situations in their home countries who are forced to cross the same way as Dora. Forty-six years later, and as a country, we have not addressed this reality for so many.

We held a book reading as part of the Not Forgotten Project and I read from my upcoming narrative non-fiction book, Not Forgotten (working title), Pauline Hovey (fellow volunteer and Substack author) read from her manuscript about her work in the borderlands, and Emily Miller read passages from Dora’s memoir. I experienced such a sense of camaraderie and support being in a room filled with loving, active, problem-solving persons who were being drawn into engaging stories about the world in which we have all decided to participate in heartfelt ways.

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

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The Battalion is planning a week of activities we’re calling the Not Forgotten Project: Para las Madres (For the mothers). There will be a women-led faith gathering in the desert, book readings by various borderland authors, a presentation at the wall by a photographer/activist, a community presentation with several speakers, and we will lead six searches in the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico just west of El Paso. Several of the searchers are coming from long distances and it will be their first time searching and also likely their first experience of the desert. As I prepare to lead them, I have been thinking about what they will see, remembering my first time out in the bizarre world of our borderlands.

Every person is profoundly affected by seeing human remains, but I’ve learned that the other items we find can be as equally upsetting. All of the northbound recent footprints are sobering. Seeing one shoe always unnerves me. How could the person have gone on without a shoe?! Did they die? Were they rescued? We see many backpacks with toothpaste, pain killers, inhalers, sanitary napkins, and Band-Aids spilling out of them. Such personal, necessary items. Why were they left behind? Why so many? Why out in the middle of vast areas, so far from roads?

One of our volunteers found a little spiral notebook and read from it during our break time. It was written in Spanish in block letters with hand-drawn hearts sprinkled amongst the words. God go with you. And may you be happy. How can I not remember you if together we have lived through everything. Always remember that you leave a void in this house. What happened to this safety seeker? Where was he? What did his family know?

There are many small Bibles but also full-sized ones, and once I picked up a Spanish language version of Carlos Castenada’s A Separate Reality. I shook the book and worked to rub off the grains of sand that clung to the curled pages. I tried to imagine the young man or woman who chose this spiritual work to bring to the United States, perhaps as a comfort or a guide, and then lost or abandoned it. What was I to do with it? Just lay it back down in the sand to sink into the desert?

I will be thoughtful of the new searchers as they see backpacks sinking into the sand and want to investigate them for identification, phones, personal mementos. But that is not our focus and we ask that they continue on, maintaining our evenly-spaced search line. I know how difficult this can be, to walk by the backpacks, tangled coats, a woman’s bra caught on the thorns of a mesquite bush, baseball caps with U.S. sports team logos, jeans, socks, shoes… All of these items once belonged to individuals, persons seeking safety. They tug at my heart and conscience as I know they will for the new searchers.

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

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I visited with a friend this week whom I hadn’t seen for several months. He said that he read my Substack essays, but he hadn’t commented on them because they were so sad. He didn’t know what he could say. This was not the first time I have heard this, but coming from a therapist who dealt with trauma, it sobered me. How do I continue to be a witness at the border without causing readers to turn away from what is happening? I’ve decided to sprinkle in a hopeful essay now and then (if there can be such a thing around so much loss).

We, the Battalion Search and Rescue, get regular inquiries from people who want to help with our work. Often, the persons want to participate on a search, but they are unable to hike the miles required off terrain under harsh conditions. Over the years, we’ve developed different ways for them to participate. The Sisters from Chaparral are in this category and are always eager to help. They attended a vigil in front of the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office and they also participated in a memorial service held at a site of uncollected remains (the August 30^th site) as we tried to garner attention from the media about the situation, as well as soothe our personal anguish about the unrecovered woman and her grieving family. The nuns had driven down the dirt road to within a five minute walk of the site, and this became a special BSAR story: “Nuns in minivans” had made it when the Doña Ana county sheriff’s deputy who took our call to collect the remains had stated he couldn’t go because he didn’t have a vehicle capable of driving there.

Another non-search activity the nuns participated in was a desert cleanup, where 13 volunteers traipsed through the desert to collect and then sort material that had been left behind. We gathered mounds of backpacks, pants, shirts, coats, hats, socks, and underwear. There was camaraderie and humor as the sorting continued for several hours – what could be cleaned and taken to shelters and what needed to be discarded. Someone pointed out a little pocket sewn into underwear, just like my friend Dora Rodriguez’s mother did for her 46 years ago when Dora fled the civil war in El Salvador and crossed into the United States.

Sister Chavela found a baby carrier on our clean-up day and became distraught until our long-time volunteer Heidi offered the explanation that the parent and child likely made it safely to this location near a road.

At the end of the day after we had piled many bulging black plastic bags into the bed of the truck, we went around our circle and each shared a few words about the experience. What still stays with me was what one volunteer said: Behind every backpack, a person. Now as I’m searching and come upon empty backpacks filling slowly with sand, I’m reminded that a person carried this pack, once filled with hopes and dreams for a better life.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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I attended a social justice symposium this week at NMSU called Ni Una Más (Not One More): Standing Together Against Femicide and Gender-based Violence. These parents – especially mothers – siblings, community members, academics, activists, and others from the Ciudad Juarez area have been mourning the loss of these young women and girls for decades. They are trying to end the violence against women and girls and seek justice for these thousands of lost lives. I caught myself gnawing on my fingers in the dark auditorium as I listened to the grief stricken mothers whose children had been murdered directly across the border from where we search in New Mexico. I saw the distraught faces and slumped shoulders of those who are still searching for their missing daughters. They sat at long tables on stage during panel discussions with the beautiful, smiling faces of their young daughters projected on the screen behind them. It was all so visceral, so real and raw. I didn’t want to let my mind make a connection with these heartbroken women to the remains we find a few miles away in the same desert, the majority of them female.

I rarely speak with family members of missing or deceased persons so their pain is at a distance when I am trudging through the deep sands, looking left, looking right, looking left, looking right. There are California-based search groups that are in regular contact with families in other countries and they lead searches looking for specific missing persons. The Battalion Search and Rescue performs general searches. James analyzes where safety seekers might be crossing, or have crossed, and we conduct systematic grid sweeps rather than hiking out to a specific point where a person may have last made contact with a family member. Tragically, we find remains almost every search.

Occasionally, a family member will reach out to our group and I will speak with them in my intermediate Spanish apologizing profoundly for not being able to help while directing them to whom they can contact to potentially locate their missing loved one. It is not our government in any form – not 911, not county search and rescue, not the law enforcement agency who has jurisdiction in that area, not the border patrol. Who often steps up to help are volunteer groups.

The majority of family members seeking information about their missing daughters and sons, mothers and fathers cannot enter into the United States to search for their loved ones themselves. From my first experience witnessing the reality of the border, I have felt like I am searching on behalf of these relatives. I carry them with me. Like the audience members at the conference who chanted to the speaker, ¡No estas sola! ¡No estas sola! I want to tell the distraught mothers, You are not alone! I am out here searching for you.

The poet Rumi said, Surely there is a window heart to heart. Yes, surely there is a window from my heart to the heart of these mothers when I am at a site with human remains. These murdered and missing young girls and women are not mere statistics, numbers. To remember them is a form of justice. To search is an act of protest.

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

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There was a two month period in 2024 when the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office (DASO) in southern New Mexico and the NM Office of the Medical Investigator (OMI) did not go out to locate and collect the human remains we reported. Six sites that are only ten minutes from a gas station remain lying on the desert sands in spite of our repeated efforts. Over the past 18 months, James and I have traveled to these sites regularly, bringing various media so they could see the “evidence” for themselves and report on the issue. We were trying to shed light on this situation so that public awareness might pressure the OMI and DASO to carry out their legally-required responsibilities.

Over the past year and a half we filed complaints with the NM Attorney General and with DASO’s Office of Internal Affairs. We spoke with Senator Heinrich, Representative Vasquez, Governor Lujan Grisham’s staff, the El Paso field office of the FBI, the State Auditor, and the Doña Ana County Attorney, Manager, and Commission Chair. At the end of February 2026, James spoke at the Doña Ana County Commissioners meeting about the unrecovered human remains so it would be entered into the public record. Perhaps this last effort will be what forces DASO and OMI to perform their jobs.

Sadly, these sites of human remains took on names as we had to repeatedly refer to them when speaking with journalists: the Fence Line Girl, the Fence Line Leg, Ada Guadalupe, Middle of the Field, the Blue Bra, and the August 30^th site. As of this writing, only one has been recovered – the August 30^th site. We forced the collection by waiting nine hours one hot day last May until the deputies and field investigator for the OMI arrived. It was an emotional day for me, a long despedida as my fellow searcher Heidi called it – a long goodbye. Eight months prior when the deputy told me straight out that he would not go to the site, I made a promise to the deceased woman that I would not forget her. That promise tugged at my heart each time I re-visited her.

At one of the remaining five uncollected sites – the Fence Line Girl – lie her clothing, shoes, and backpack. I have watched her blue bikini panties with the embroidered hearts on them be blown farther away from the site as each month passes. Could these be used to help identify her? Or perhaps her now faded grey shirt with the sequined fox on the front? There are many, many bones scattered widely in the area, but not her skull. With each journalist we brought there over the past year and a half, I would wander far from the site, looking for this missing part that seems to symbolize our humanity. Last month the Battalion was searching in our customary grid pattern near the Fence Line Girl’s site, and I asked my team if they had the energy and willingness to add a few miles onto our already six-mile search. I explained why and they all agreed, including our septuagenarian searcher who knew it would make for an especially tiring day. We formed our long, evenly-spaced line and I led them parallel to the site of remains. When I heard Laurel say over her radio, “Abbey, please come over here,” goosebumps raised on my arms.

I have been doing these searches long enough that I’ve learned to marshal my emotions at the site of human remains, but this time a feeling of relief flooded me and I felt tears forming at the corners of my eyes. I have been with this deceased young woman for a very long time. I’ve thought of her and also her family so often. They must be grieving and wondering what happened to their daughter, their sister. I squeezed Laurel’s arm in thanks. We were about 500 feet from the rest of the woman’s remains, but now she felt complete. When they finally come to recover her (and I believe it will be soon after James’s presentation at the County Commissioner meeting), they can collect almost all of her.

The normal steps of our work are to search, locate remains, and report them to the local law enforcement agency and the OMI. Done. Then we can move on with our lives until the next search. But when reported remains are ignored and go unrecovered, these deceased persons live on in our psyches and we carry them and the worries of their families with us, month after month.

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

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I was interviewed this month by a conservative media outlet and was a bit more anxious than normal, since I wasn’t sure if they might pose leading or biased questions that I would want to address in a manner that invited understanding rather than reinforced walls. I also knew it was being broadcast live which creates another level of pressure. It went better than I had imagined, but per usual after an interview, I reflected on what I could have phrased differently and remembered things I wish I had added. I have probably been interviewed 20 times about the Battalion’s work and though I am always willing because I want to help shed light on the lost lives in the borderlands, I am often left with self-doubts. Surely someone else was more knowledgeable or articulate and could have done a better job. But it was too late. The program was out in the world being distributed widely coast-to-coast.

I have experienced similar feelings of regret at various jobs I’ve held. After an important meeting I would come up with a brilliant idea. After we returned to our offices I would suss out an issue within a new program that was being proposed that I wish I had brought up. So many too-late ideas but the meeting was over, actions were being taken.

Over time I learned to ask the persons leading the meetings to provide a detailed agenda ahead of time so the introverts in the organization could consider the topics more fully on their own time before we got left behind by the extroverts on the team who do so well in such group settings.

And now with this most recent interview about the deaths along the border where we search, I had another example of the lament of the introvert: I wish I had said… In this case, however, it was accompanied by a profound sense of having let the deceased down. The interviewer had said that it must be shocking to find human remains and then he asked me how I felt. I replied using his word, that it was shocking, and it is, but it is so much more. It’s as if my mind went blank; introverts need a bit more time. It was too late for the interview, but I can speak now.

I feel sadness that often deepens to anguish. I look around at the site and my head automatically begins shaking back and forth and I hear myself groaning quietly no, no, no, as my body tries not to believe what I am seeing. Another deceased person who was seeking safety, dead on our public lands. I feel a deep sadness realizing that here, on this spot, a life ended. I grieve for the families who can’t be here, who are left waiting for news of what happened to their loved one. Anger washes over me, too, at my country for causing thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths rather than address pathways to legal immigration. Out in the desert I have to pull my shoulders back and calm my emotions so I can direct the team at the site. I will process these feelings later with my partner and my therapist.

So today, now, even if it is a bit late, I apologize to the deceased and their families and to the public who viewed the interview for not expressing in the moment the profound sadness, disbelief, anger, and wrongness of finding a fallen one alone in the desert.

I read an article in NPR this month about a man who is modeling strength and perseverance in the face of the injustices of our systems. Nick Benson stands in an airport by the window and watches the tarmac where shackled persons struggle to get down out of busses and then climb the stairs and board charter flights. He takes photos and adds these numbers to his detailed spreadsheet.

This is a version of my work with the Battalion, our all-volunteer humanitarian search and rescue group which searches for the lost but not forgotten in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. I blurted out Yes! when I read him say that this is “just happening in the background,” that the public was unaware of what was occurring. This is the same lack of awareness of the number of deceased persons we find on our public lands.

Like Nick, I document our searches and what we find. It feels surreal and deeply tragic to have to record lost lives on a spreadsheet but the numbers are too large to keep track of any other way.

Mr. Benson said there were no other sources of quantitative data about what is happening. I understood this very clearly. In my world, there are no government agencies that search for missing and deceased persons in the desert. Without the work of our group and others like ours, how many human remains, how many lives would remain unseen, unrecovered, uncounted?

“This was one of the best ways I could help and I was glad to be here to do so,” he was quoted as saying. I had heard myself saying very similar words to friends, family, reporters. I want to change the entire immigration system, but since I can’t, I do what I can. I search.

The article stated that Nick was documenting between 19-100+ people a day who were being deported from Minneapolis. He estimated that in January there were 2,339 deportations from Minnesota. In one month! The majority of those occurred without due process.

In our work, the Battalion has located over 80 sites with human remains in two and a half years in New Mexico and Arizona. The numbers seem staggering especially since we only search once a month with a handful of volunteers. I cannot allow myself to estimate how many more sites of lost lives remain unfound, how many families are left not knowing what happened to their loved one.

In the article, Mr. Benson said that every now and then persons stop before entering the airplane and turn around to look at the world. What are they thinking? I have often wondered what the final thoughts are of those in the desert and hope they found a moment of peace at the end of their lives.

He was quoted as saying, “Another sobering moment in a never-ending chain of sobering moments here.” Those could be my words as I witness another loss, another tragedy, another unnecessary abrupt end to a life. He said, “I think it’s the most important work that I’m ever going to get an opportunity to do. But I really wish I didn’t have to.” Yes, my fellow kindred spirit, yes, I feel exactly the same.

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

“Minneapolis now has daily deportation flights. One man has been documenting them.”

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/06/nx-s1-5701432/minneapolis-ice-air-deportation-flights

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