The database will include basic data such as when and where remains are found as well as detailed information about the clothing and other personal items found near the body. The information could help authorities — and families searching for missing loved ones — identify bodies, some of which have been in Pima County's custody for a year.

Those clues could allow for more analysis of potential DNA matches under Mexico's new decentralized process, which lets its 49 regional consulate offices choose whichever DNA testing lab they believe best meets their area's needs.

Increasing the pool of potential matches is critical to identifying remains with no clues to identify them. About half of bodies found in the desert carry no identification papers. If they do, the documents are phony.

The database is also seen as an important step toward a borderwide effort to standardize the way recovered bodies are handled and identified.

Remains held a year

The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office holds the remains of unidentified migrants up to a year in hopes they can be identified.

If they are not, the forensic staff collects genetic samples and stores them; eventually the bodies are cremated. From 2001 to 2007 the Medical Examiner's Office has processed more than 1,000 migrant bodies, at least 300 of which remain unidentified.

The database will have three major components:

● Basic data on the 300 unidentified remains in the medical examiner's custody, including their physical descriptions and unique features.

● Data on more than 200 missing-person reports received at the office.

● GPS coordinates and other data to map locations where bodies processed by the Medical Examiner's Office — both identified and unidentified — were found.

"If we map where everybody was, we have a better chance, especially if somebody died near somebody else or somebody died along a particular trail and is from a particular village or a particular country," said Bruce Anderson, a forensic medical investigator with the Medical Examiner's Office. "Let's say in Central America, there are possibly migratory routes that they are preferencially taking.

"Let's say a family knows their missing loved one crossed just north of Altar and walked for an hour and then he couldn't keep … up with the group. We can then calculate about how far he could have walked in the U.S. after about an hour and we can say, 'OK, give me a mile of search around this coordinate.' "

Data entry for the database is expected to be completed this fall. The mapping component is to be ready next year, Anderson said.

Two graduate students, Robin Reineke and Francisco Baires, are doing data entry for the project, and John Chamblee at the University of Georgia and Gary Christopherson from the Center for Applied Spatial Analysis at the University of Arizona, are designing the database and mapping component.

Plans for expansion

At first the database will be local, although it will probably include some cases from Pinal and Santa Cruz counties. If the effort is a success, the plan is to start promoting the database and working with other agencies and other jurisdictions to expand it, said Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner for Pima County.

Already the office has a 75 percent success rate identifying migrants, Anderson said. "We are ahead of most jurisdictions," he said, but there is no centralized database, and different jurisdictions have their own procedures for identifying migrants.

In Calexico, Calif., Mexican Consul Pablo Jesus Arnaud has to follow California laws that ban the collection of DNA samples from bodies unless the Sheriff's Department approves it. Arnaud is working with the Sheriff's Department in an agreement to get the necessary DNA samples.

In 2007 the consulate in Calexico had 28 cases, seven of which have not been identified. There is only one unidentified case pending for this year.

"Here if they are not identified during a certain period of time, they are buried," he said.

The situation shows the challenges faced by those who identify migrants who died crossing the border, said Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith of the Binational Migration Institute at the UA.

"Only New Mexico has a state standard, but beyond that, each county is different and does whatever they want," she said.

The institute is conducting a study to gather information about how other counties handle migrant deaths in hopes of developing a national standard. Once it has all the information, it will organize a national conference to discuss the topic, Rubio-Goldsmith said.

"What we have seen so far, we can say there is not that much communication among the counties. Most of them have asked us what others do about it," said Kat Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the Tucson-based human-rights group Coalicion de Derechos Humanos and a field researcher in the study. "This is not because they don't want to work together, but because every county has its own rules and budget."

Melissa McCormick, an investigator in the Binational Migration Institute study, said the institute is seeking a grant of $500,000 with the aid of Rep. Raul Grijalva's office to continue the study.

"We need to recognize that this is happening, that we have this unprecedented number of people dying in the desert, and that we have the responsibility of doing our most to allow their families to know what happened," McCormick said.

The database may not keep people from dying in the desert, but it could help identify them, said Anderson, of the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office.

"If we get everybody pulling in the right direction, and we probably can, hopefully we can serve as a model to the rest of the border jurisdictions," he said.

New database should ease identification

Thanks to a anonymous donation of $200,000, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office is building a database to help identify illegal immigrants who died trying to cross the desert. Among its features:

• It will contain the physical descriptions of unidentified remains.

• It will include information from missing-persons reports.

• It will allow that information to be shared and sorted for possible matches.

• It will be capable of mapping locations of migrant deaths, which could help identify trends and find missing people.

Source: Pima County Medical Examiner's Office