Son wants chance to find mom's body
Migrant awaits nod to join desert search
CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen
RENEE BRACAMONTE/Tucson Citizen
Jesus Abran Buenrostro, 15, and his grandfather Cesario Dominguez wait in Nogales, Son., for news of Buenrostro's mother, Lecrecia Luna Dominguez, who died in the desert while crossing illegally with Buenrostro. The youth is awaiting approval to re-enter the country to help in a search for her body. Other family members and Tucsonans have been scouring the desert southwest of Tucson for the body.
Fifteen-year-old Jesus Abran Buenrostro Dominguez memorized the silhouette of Baboquivari Peak as his mother lay dying on the desert floor.
If he could remember where they were, maybe he could get help. His mother, 35-year-old Lecrecia Luna Dominguez, died before he had the chance.
Now all he wants is the chance to find her body and bring her home.
Please jump with me, we need your help.
The Border Patrol found and returned Jesus to Mexico three days after his mother died. He hadn't had water for days and was in shock. The Border Patrol didn't learn about his mother until days later.
By that time, nearly a dozen friends and family members from as far away as New Hampshire had descended on Tucson to try to help find the body. The Mexican Consulate here arranged a one-day special visa to allow Jesus to help. The family said the Border Patrol gave up after an hour and a half. The Border Patrol, which said agents searched for 10 hours, said the boy has no idea where his mother is.
Since then, a growing cadre of volunteers from Tucson has joined in the search, and the family has been trying desperately to get Jesus back into the country.
"We have little chance without my grandson," said the woman's father, Cesario Dominguez Saldiva.
Jesus has spent most of the last two weeks in rundown hostels and hovering in a shaded plaza near the port of entry in downtown Nogales. He doesn't go far, in case word comes that he can enter the United States and join the search.
Jesus never wanted to come to the United States in the first place.
"I wanted to stay home," he said.
Home is the small village of San Martin Sombrerete in Zacatecas. Jesus' father works in Texas, and it was hoped the family could reunite. They crossed with Jesus' 7-year-old sister Nora. When Luna Dominguez fell ill on the third day of the journey, the group of village friends they were traveling with continued on with Nora. Jesus stayed behind to be with his mother.
"She kept begging me to go on without her, but I couldn't leave her," Jesus said.
A week after Jesus' family learned that his mother had died, the consulate arranged for a search with the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol would take Jesus, who was granted a one-day permission to enter the country, his grandfather, and a consulate translator in a helicopter to search for the body, the consulate told the family.
"It's protocol for both ground and air operations to participate in searches," Border Patrol spokesman Gustavo Soto said.
On the day of the search, the consulate representative failed to show up and the Border Patrol never got the helicopter.
"None was available," Soto said.
As soon as Dominguez saw there would be no helicopter, "My heart sank," he said. "I knew they weren't serious. How can you find a body in the desert like that?"
Jesus and his grandfather, each in a different truck, drove around with Border Patrol agents. They didn't find much.
"The boy didn't have enough information," Soto said. "So the agents suspended the search."
Jesus insisted that agents weren't listening to him.
"I kept telling them we were too far north," he said. "But they did what they wanted."
Jesus and his mother were just west of Highway 286, and between Kitt Peak Observatory and Baboquivari, according to Jesus.
Jesus and his grandfather said the search couldn't have gone on for more than two hours.
Soto said the search went on for more than 10.
The next week, Jose Lerma, a family friend from New Hampshire, tried to get the consulate to institute another search.
Enrique Muñoz, a consulate employee, told Lerma it could do no more for the family.
A search was done, the boy didn't know where the body was, and that was that, Muñoz said, in a conversation confirmed by the Tucson Mexican consul, Juan Calderon.
In the meantime, news about the family's plight spread. Tucsonans began to join in the search.
Pilot Sandy Lanham got a call late last Thursday night. It was someone asking if she could help out with her airplane.
"I didn't have to think about it," Lanham said, "because I care about people dying in the desert 20 miles from my house. The question is, how can people not care?"
Lanham is recipient of a prestigious MacArthur "genius" Award, for her work studying wildlife along the border.
She took Dominguez and Lerma up for a four-hour flight Friday.
"Normally I search for the living," she said. "I've never looked for the dead before."
Jesus Garcia, a 33-year-old lot attendant at a car dealership in Tucson, heard about the family on Spanish radio.
"I felt bad for them," Garcia said. "I just wanted to help."
Garcia joined Dominguez, Lerma, two cousins, and about 10 volunteers from the humanitarian group No More Deaths in a search on foot early Sunday morning. They used the information they got from the flight with Lanham to direct the search.
"We are close to where my daughter is," Dominguez said. "I can feel it. For that I am grateful."
Friday night, Dominguez and Lerma spoke at a meeting about human rights attended by local Mexican consuls and a visiting group of Mexican senators. There, Tucson Consul Calderon said he would make arrangements to have Jesus brought back into the country.
Nearly a week after the meeting, Jesus waits in Nogales. Calderon said he made the request Monday, but the Border Patrol said it received it yesterday.
If granted, the request is likely to be for just another day, Soto said.
"What could he tell us in three or five days that he can't tell us in one?" Soto asked.
The Border Patrol must do more to help families such as the Dominguezes, said Margo Cowan, a lawyer for No More Deaths who searched with the family Sunday.
"The callous disregard for the suffering that families experience is incomprehensible," Cowan said.
The Border Patrol's and the Mexican Consulate's handling of the case may stem from the overwhelming number of people who are dying, said Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos.
Over the past week, the Border Patrol has found the bodies of 18 more illegal immigrants. Six of those were found on Tuesday. Another two were found on Monday.
The deaths bring the total to well over 160 dead since the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2004, according to medical examiners' records. In all of last year, medical examiners recorded 221 deaths.
Dominguez is realistic about the odds of finding his daughter.
"If the search had been well done the first time," he said, "maybe that would have been enough for us. We could have rested knowing we did everything we could have."
He knows that with each day of scorching heat, there maybe little more than scattered bones to find.
But he will stay until he finds something.
"My wife is sick with this," he said. "I cannot go home empty-handed. Even if I find a shoe, we will know what happened to our daughter. We will have some kind of peace."
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=local&story_id=071405a1_search&page_number=0
Southern Arizona aid agencies need your help NOW. Please look at the websites quoted here and donate as you feel inspired. If you would like to volunteer your time with any of these agencies, just email them for a quick response. There is an upcoming campaign to flood the desert with humanitarian workers coming up very soon, and I'm sure they'd love to have your help.
http://www.samaritanpatrols.org
http://www.nomoredeaths.org
Please recommend this so we can get as many donations as possible to these agencies. Thank you.