The scientist who identifies lost immigrants

Lori Baker still remembers the first time she identified an immigrant’s remains, said Molly Hennessy-Fiske in the Los Angeles Times. “I cried and cried over that case,” she says. Based at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the forensic anthropologist had offered to help identify the bodies of the growing number of dead migrants found along the U.S.-Mexico border. Some bones had been found near a voter registration card in Pima County, Ariz. The card was used to track down a family in the Yucatán region of Mexico whose DNA matched that of the victim: Rosa Cano Dominguez, a 32-year-old mother of two who’d been left by smugglers to die after spraining her ankle. “I wasn’t sure I could keep doing this, because it disturbed me so much,’’ Baker says “We’re supposed to be detached doing this work, and I’m not.” But she saw that her work helped grieving relatives, so she created Reuniting Families—a program that gathers relatives’ DNA and compares it with unidentified remains. Even today, the human toll “hurts my soul,” says Baker. “I’ve had families who call, still looking after 25 years.’’ When remains turn out not to be their loved ones, they feel relief. “But then they call back a few days later and ask, ‘What now?’”

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