Feb 1, 2018 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 5 min read

Arizona has plenty of hot spots, so to speak, to attract college students during winter break.

The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner would not be on that list.

“Basically, when remains are found in the desert, that’s where they bring them to identify the cause of death,” University of Notre Dame sophomore Fabi Shipley said about the facility in Tucson, a little over an hour north of the Mexican border. “They rolled out a skeleton right in front of us, and that was probably one of the most shocking things I’ve seen in my life. It was really hard to swallow.”

The not-so-pleasant visit was one of the stops that Shipley, a 2016 Mt. Lebanon High School graduate and co-president of her senior class, made during an early January study trip in January to southern Arizona as part of the course Border Issues: Mexico-U.S. Border Immersion, offered through Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns.

“In Pittsburgh and South Bend,” Shipley said about the university’s home in Indiana, “we’re just so far away and we’re disconnected from what’s really happening. So I think it’s definitely an experience that gave me a whole different perspective.”

What she saw at the medical examiner’s office, for example, is accompanied by grim statistics: From 2001-16, more than 2,700 people died while attempting to cross the border into Arizona, many trying to brave desert conditions.

“Likely, hundreds if not thousands, more people have died, but they just never have been found,” Shipley explained. “It’s a huge area, and there aren’t people actively going through there all the time, because it’s really remote.”

Also in Tucson, she had the opportunity to speak with representatives of the Colibri Center for Human Rights about its Missing Migrant Project.

“They take in calls from families who have lost a loved one trying to cross the border. They’ll get descriptions of the person and then try to match that with the remains that they find, so that the bodies can be returned and they can have proper funerals and burials, and closure, really,” she said.

“They have a lot of success, but there are a lot of people who are really difficult to identify because remains could be sitting out there in the desert for months or years. They end up just being bones. They get scattered by animals.”

Humanitarian organizations in the region attempt to mitigate the death toll by providing items such as medical supplies, blankets and clothing when possible, and dropping off gallon jugs of water in strategic locations. The Notre Dame contingent participated in a water drop during their last full day in Arizona.

Another eye-opening experience for them was a visit to Nogales.

“This town is literally split in half,” Shipley said. “You can see into Mexico.”

Like Berlin during the Cold War, Nogales is divided by a wall – actually, its slats make it more resemble a fence – that is part of a series of barriers already spanning the border from Texas to the Pacific Ocean. On the American side, Shipley and her classmates visited the Nogales Border Patrol Station, the largest of its kind in the United States.

“What I found to be kind of difficult about it is that they had a PowerPoint presentation they showed us that included a video with this action music in the background. All of the slides were photos either of migrants with packs of drugs, or one of them was carrying an AK-47,” she said. “They’re open to any questions, so we asked, ‘How many migrants are actually carrying weapons?’ And he said, ‘Very few. They’re usually tired and starving, and not a threat.’

“So why are all the photos that they’re showing very threatening-looking? I think it’s a misrepresentation.”

Back in Tucson, the group attended federal court hearings for people arrested through Operation Streamline, a joint initiatives of the departments of Justice and Homeland Security. During such proceedings, dozens of defendants at a time are likely to plead guilty.

“Because of that,” Shipley said, “there are a lot of questions about the constitutionality: Are people getting adequate time with counsel? Are they really understanding what their rights are when they’re pleading guilty? Are they doing so voluntarily? Are they getting due process?”

While those types of questions continue to be debated between supporters of strong anti-immigration policy and their detractors, Shipley provided her personal viewpoint of what she learned visiting the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The takeaway I got was that more than anything else, it’s really a humanitarian issue,” she said. “Obviously, it’s political. But most fundamentally, no one should be OK with people dying awful deaths from dehydration and exposure in the desert.”