{"id":5905,"date":"2025-12-31T20:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.maryknollsociety.org\/magazine\/?p=5905"},"modified":"2026-01-06T21:02:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T21:02:30","slug":"catholic-search-party-finds-migrant-remains-in-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.maryknollsociety.org\/magazine\/catholic-search-party-finds-migrant-remains-in-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Search Party Finds Migrant Remains in Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Simone Orendain, OSV News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(OSV News) \u2014 A dozen Jesuit priests and seminarians along with lay volunteers found the remains of two women earlier this month after they scoured an 80-mile stretch in the corner of the largest desert in North America in a search for migrants, whether living or deceased, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 20 people concentrated the search on the southeastern edge of New Mexico bordering El Paso, Texas<\/a>, in the Chihuahuan Desert over a weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, searchers were especially aware of the tough climate for those wanting to migrate to the U.S. during nearly a year of the Trump administration\u2019s hardline immigration policies, including a major crackdown on border crossers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heidi Cerneka<\/a>, a member of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners<\/a> community, went out with the Jesuits. She has volunteered in searches every month in the Chihuahuan Desert for the past two years and almost every time, each site had human remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cerneka told OSV News that finding only the two sets of remains in a single site after more teams than usual looked through 10 sites for three days \u201cwas unusual.\u201d Last year searchers came across eight areas containing the remains of missing individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she said even if the searches led by the Ajo, Arizona-based Battalion Search and Rescue, which took the team to the area, have become more refined, \u201cI would never want the desert to be easier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are not normal times\u201d under President Donald Trump<\/a>, Cerneka said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She deplored the Trump administration\u2019s recent severe limitations on asylum as an option for those without papers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human remains recovery continues amid border crossing decline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On Dec. 19, the Department of Homeland Security reported more than 2.5 million people unauthorized to be in the U.S. left the country either by self-deporting (1.9 million) or being removed by the government (660,000). DHS credited the Trump administration\u2019s restrictive measures with fewer border crossings and apprehensions at the start of the federal government\u2019s fiscal year in October. There were 29% fewer than the previous October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even with fewer recorded crossings<\/a>, the search and recovery group does not expect its work to end, according to Battalion founder James Holeman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cerneka is an El Paso-based immigration attorney<\/a>. She said the work of finding human remains is something that gives her better insight into some of her clients\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Maryknoll
Maryknoll Lay Missioner Heidi Cerneka, an immigration attorney based in El Paso, Texas, speaks during a Posada in El Paso Dec. 21, 2025, after she, a dozen Jesuit priests and seminarians and other volunteers found the remains of two women Dec. 19 in New Mexico, after scouring 80 miles of desert in a search for migrants, living or deceased, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. (OSV News\/courtesy James Holeman)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a sense of understanding what they went through to get here,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s knowing that even though 99.9 percent of the time, we\u2019re not going to be able to definitively identify someone, the fact that we\u2019re out there means something. The fact that we\u2019re out there because people matter and their family deserves to know. And the government needs to be responsible for recognizing the people who are dying out there<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teams record coordinates of the remains and leave markers for local authorities to be able to pick them up and do the forensic work of identifying them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Holeman told OSV News the local sheriff\u2019s office and medical examiner in Do\u00f1a Ana County, New Mexico, has been uncooperative, making working with them \u201cvery difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until local media started to report about this that the remains started being picked up, he said. Although five sites, he added, have been left untouched for the past 15 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rooting through arid terrain made up of hillocks and spindly shrubs with no distinguishing landmarks in sight, under a piercingly bright sun, has made\u00a0the migrants\u2019 plight<\/a>\u00a0even more real for the volunteers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The fear makes migrants vulnerable in the desert<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cerneka pointed out while volunteers have radios to call for help, plenty of water and \u201cgood shoes,\u201d migrants have little water, likely traveled far to get into Mexico and probably do not know whom they are crossing with into disorienting territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow much more vulnerable<\/a> they are because they\u2019re scared,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vincent Truong, a Jesuit seminarian, searched for the first time and said he did not know what to expect. He was on the team that found the two sets of remains they believed were women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something sobering to be able to see,\u201d he said. \u201cNot just, you know, a leg or an arm bone, but, to see the mandible, the jawbone. See the spine, and to just \u2026 sit with that.\u201d Truong, 31, told OSV News, in that moment the feeling of not knowing \u201cwhat I was looking for\u201d in the desolate silence was completely erased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy prayer became a kind of calling out to those in the desert saying, \u2018If you want to be found, let me find you. Then cry out so I can hear you.\u2019 And so that became my prayer<\/a> as I was walking for those three days,\u201d he said, describing an overpowering sense of love that drove him to look for more lost migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truong said his companions found cast-aside Bibles and rosaries, and he was struck by what he imagined was \u201cthe psychological and spiritual difficulty (of the migrants). What spiritual hope did they hold on to as they were crossing? What did that look like? What did that feel like? What did that sound like?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first-year master of divinity student at Boston College said in the middle of the desert he also wondered about his own immigrant parents\u2019 experience of coming to the U.S.<\/a> He called them \u201cboat people\u201d from Vietnam and said he pictured himself in the middle of the sea escaping a war-torn country, as he was walking in the middle of the desert among its indistinguishable, disorienting surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a weird feeling to kind of be able to have almost both an experience<\/a> that isn\u2019t mine, but also is mine at the same time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every migrant had a story and is mourned<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jaret Ornelas, a Jesuit seminarian also studying at Boston College, took his brothers on this search for the second year in a row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe terrain is very challenging here,\u201d said Ornelas, 36. \u201cWe were doing longer miles. \u2026 It\u2019s harder to do grid work. Keeping an eye on each other is a little bit more challenging. And it\u2019s also, I imagine, very challenging for people traveling<\/a> because there aren\u2019t the big landmarks like there are along the routes with the mountains and stuff in Arizona. It\u2019s very, very easy to get turned around out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has gone out with the Battalion Search and Rescue group for the past four years but had only previously volunteered in Arizona searches. There, Ornelas described to OSV News it was easier to stay together<\/a> and keep a grid-formation while scrutinizing the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even if this New Mexico search with its confusing endless egg-carton style hillocks yielded a very small number of remains, he said he \u201creally felt God\u2019s presence here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ornelas said it was also because of the \u201cvibrant\u201d local church community in El Paso<\/a>, where the Jesuits stayed. They also hosted El Paso Bishop Mark J. Seitz<\/a>, immediate past chairman of the U.S. bishops\u2019 migration committee, during Saturday night dinner Dec. 20. And he said doing the search, experiencing community<\/a>, and having a memorial Mass for past recovered and identified migrants with the local church gave him the sense that \u201cthis is right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo matter what the outcome is \u2014 whether we find 10 people or we find nobody \u2013the mission is the same: to recognize the dignity<\/a> of every person, including those who are deceased, knowing that God holds them and holds their families,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featured image: Two unidentified Jesuit priests concelebrate Mass in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico Dec. 21, 2025, for a 20-year-old Guatemalan woman, whose remains were previously recovered in the area marked by the cross, and also for two women whose remains were found Dec 19. (OSV News\/courtesy Collin Price)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maryknoll Lay Missioner Heidi Cerneka, an immigration lawyer at the border, joined Jesuits and other volunteers on a sobering mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":5906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_eb_data_table":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1053],"tags":[2026,2025,2027,1394,682,1616,2028,1060,2029,2031,1638,1846,203,2030,855,1673,643],"class_list":["post-5905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-border-crossings-and-apprehensions","tag-chihuahuan-desert","tag-coming-to-the-u-s","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-el-paso","tag-fear","tag-heidi-cerneka","tag-human-dignity","tag-human-remains","tag-james-holeman","tag-jesuits","tag-maryknoll-lay-missioner","tag-migrants","tag-new-mexico","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-simone-orendain","tag-vulnerable"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCatholic Search Party Finds Migrant Remains in Desert - 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