Battalion Search And Rescue

When Battalion Search and Rescue discovered the scattered, skeletal remains of another body in the desert at Organ Pipe National Monument earlier this year, founder James Holeman followed usual protocol, noting GPS coordinates and taking photos, as well as marking the area with fluorescent orange tape to help law enforcement later retrieve the unidentified remains. – Read More

The full scale of the horror at the Southern Border can be revealed as DailyMail.com discovered bones piled up and migrant bodies that are too hot to touch. – Read More

Thousands of migrants have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years, with volunteers regularly finding piles of skeletal remains scattered across the desert — often the only evidence of a life cut short attempting to reach America. – Read More

On June 25, 2021, I was working in the reception area at Kino Border Initiative, a migrant aid center on the Mexican side of the border, when our social worker called me over to help two brothers from central Mexico. They were looking for help finding their brother, a 35-year-old father of two, who had attempted to cross the border at a remote location in the desert about two weeks prior. – Read More

SANTA TERESA, New Mexico (Border Report) – Abbey Carpenter and James Holman say looking for people lost in the hot southern New Mexico desert is physically demanding. – Read More

SANTA TERESA, New Mexico (KTSM) — Over a month has passed since Abbey Carpenter and James Holman from Battalion Search and Rescue (BSAR) guided KTSM and Border Report crews to two sites with skeletal remains deep into the desert west of Santa Teresa, and one of those sites remains largely unchanged. – Read More

About a dozen Jesuits from all over the world on a search and rescue mission in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert Dec. 20-22 came across eight areas that had remains of missing people. – Read More

January 8, 2025 — Last month, eleven Jesuits and three laypeople from six countries took part in a search and rescue mission in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The group was in search of migrants who crossed the Mexico border into the United States, and they came across eight areas that had remains of missing people. – Read More

When I moved to El Paso in 2016, there were fewer than 10 migrant deaths in what U.S. immigration officials call the El Paso Sector, an area that runs from Hudspeth County to the Arizona state line. By fiscal year 2023, that number had skyrocketed to 136—a record. Last fiscal year, which ended on October 1, 2024, there were 176. – Read More

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – Last year, more than 150 migrants trying to cross the border died during their travels through southern Arizona’s grueling heat and treacherous terrain, according to the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. – Read More

The blue rosary marked a spot in the desert where searchers found an identification card. It spelled out a woman’s name in thick black letters: Ada Guadalupe López Montoya, 33, born in El Salvador. – Read More

Battalion Search and Rescue members make monthly trips to look for human remains near the Mexico border in Arizona and New Mexico. – Watch Here

SANTA TERESA — On a path not far from marked human remains, pale and jagged fragments resembling bone or rock litter the desert floor. – Read More

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — It’s a hot day and James Holeman could be relaxing and enjoying retirement — instead, he’s in the middle of the desert searching inside a backpack that could belong to a person who is dead. – Read More

James Holeman founded Battalion Search and Rescue in Arizona in 2020. He expanded his search to include the desert of New Mexico, where he estimates that they’ve found 67 sites with human remains between the two states in 18 months. – Read More

A femur, a pelvis and two shoulder blades lay scattered in the sands. Nearby, a tattered jacket, a pair of pants and a blue beanie with a weathered pom-pom lay embedded in the ground, in what has become an open desert grave. – Read More

Since El Paso joined Operation Lone Star in 2022, migrant remains discovered in the desert west of the city have increased every year, even as they have declined in every other border sector. – Read More

El trabajo de los voluntarios logró que fueran identificadas una mujer salvadoreña y otra mexicana, sin embargo, cada vez encuentran más huesos y acusan que las autoridades no hacen nada por recogerlos, dejándolos expuestos al sol y al olvido. – Read More

Her skeleton lay in the open air. When they first approached the site, in the desert of Sunland Park, New Mexico, in August 2024, the volunteer search party found a body dispersed across the landscape, a rib cage here, a leg bone there. An intact jawbone sat crooked on the ground. – Read More

James Holeman suddenly stopped walking. As the rest of the volunteer group walked ahead… – Read More

Battalion Search and Rescue found the 19-year-old Central American migrant clinging to life – Read More

Immigrants, asylum seekers, and criminal gangs are all caught up in the Biden Administration’s deadly surveillance dragnet – Read More

It only took about an hour of hiking through Growler Valley before a member of Battalion Search and Rescue spotted some bones. “We’ve got human remains,” a voice announced grimly over the radio – Read More

Since 2001, the remains of more than 2,800 migrants have been found in the southern Arizona desert. Forty percent of those remains — more than 1,100 people — remain unidentified. – Read More

Larger than Borders Laurie Benson Interviews Battalion SAR volunteer James Holeman – Watch Here

**DUE TO THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF THIS CONTENT, VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.** The bodies of nearly 3,000 undocumented people have been found in the border region of southern Arizona since the beginning of the Century. Bruce Anderson and his small team of forensics anthropologists at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner have been working to identify the dead. – Watch Here