The brutality of borders
Mass grave revealed at Arizona Air Force bombing range
By
Norisa Diaz
18 August 2018
A border search-and-rescue group, Aguilas del Desierto, or “Eagles of the Desert,” found over a dozen remains of migrants after it was given special permission to search for a missing person within a limited southern section of the Barry Goldwater Air Force bombing range in Welling, Arizona, along the US/Mexico border.
The bombing range is a vast 70-mile vast swath of land that stretches from Southeast of Yuma, Arizona stretching all the way to the Sonoran Desert National Monument. The range crosses through well-known migrant routes and has remained inaccessible to human aid groups or forensics teams.
Eagles of the Desert (EED) was the first group ever allowed to perform searches on the high security bombing range which is utilized for air-to-ground bombing practice by A-10’s, F-16s and F-35 Lighting II Air Force Jets. The base is also used for Marine Corps and NATO allied flight crews while deployed to any of the aforementioned bases for training.
EED was allowed limited access to an unused area to search for the individual for whom they had a missing person’s report. The migrant was never found, but in the short time frame of searching, the group came across 13 human remains in a very small section of the bombing range.
The concentration of remains in the limited area leaves little doubt to EED that the numbers of remains are likely in the hundreds, if not thousands. Last year a Texas sheriff commented that, “For every one [body] we find, we’re probably missing five.”
The treacherous deserts along the Southwest have taken the lives of untold tens of thousands of migrants coming to the United States.
Investigative reporter John Carlos Frey helped…