Fallout from exposing Battalion Search and Rescue.

The backstory.

In the first piece on Battalion Search and Rescue’s (BSAR) Para las Madres week long search published yesterday, I wrote with facts and receipts trying to spare everyone the personal details. In the last twenty-four hours, I have been inundated with messages from academics, reporters, non-profits and volunteers who describe similar encounters with James, the leader of BSAR. Most are notes thanking me for finally saying something about this group. All request I keep them anonymous. I am getting a fuller picture of how this man has used intimidation and threats to silence most of you in the border community. I deeply regret not seeing this sooner.

Some of you have expressed regret for donating to their GoFundMe campaign that claimed the money would be used to provide support for those of us volunteering to search for deceased migrants. If you feel ripped off by this, you are not alone. I do as well. At the end of this piece, I will provide you with information on what we can do about this.

This is the backstory of what happened.

I want to be clear that I still cannot say with 100% certainty that BSAR is grifting off the deaths of migrants. I cannot see their 990 tax reports for their 501c3 because they do not file those forms claiming they are taking in less than $25,000 a year. So, I have no idea what they spend their donations on. I have my suspicions because of my most recent experience with them, but I cannot say definitively what they do with donations.

Your donations to my GoFundMe paid for my flight from San Diego to El Paso and back, a modest car rental and a basic hotel room right on the border. All other expenses such as food, gas, museum tours and other things were paid for out of my own pocket. Here’s a not so lovely view of the hideous wall from my room.

Border wall in Dona Ana County, New Mexico.

Prior to the BSAR Para las Madres search, I knew only that James has had arguments with every group he has ever worked with on the southern border. Every time I have encountered him, he has spoken ill of the other search groups, of many law enforcement agencies and officers, of academics trying to get to the bottom of why so many women are dying in the Chihuahua Desert west of El Paso. He also spoke poorly of every media outlet who interviewed him. To hear him talk, no one but he and Abbey care about the women left in the desert. It is my experience in life that when someone does this, the problem is often with the accuser and not the accused.

At the same time, the truth is that James and Abbey have found a lot of deceased migrants. Now that I have experienced a bit of the Chihuahua Desert, I realize that literally anyone can go out to there and find bodies if they walk around long enough. These are not searches based off of evidence or distress calls. BSAR combs the desert in grid patterns. If there’s a body out there, they eventually run into them. This is because it has been the policy of the U.S. Border Patrol and the federal government for over thirty years to limit who can cross legally, intentionally pushing them out to the most dangerous areas to cross and then letting the terrain disappear the bodies. That is called United States immigration deterrence and it is policy that both sides of the aisle have enthusiastically supported.

No one had suggested to me that BSAR were dishonest or grifting until after I wrote and published my first piece on them yesterday. What was said is that they were verbally abusive and disregarded the Latino and Indigenous communities’ concerns. And yet, I went because of the articles about the high percentages of female bodies that reporters and non-profit groups continued raising. I never volunteered with BSAR or promoted their work until the data, forensics anthropologists and reputable media outlets like Rolling Stone reported that what they were finding was a human rights atrocity. When I promoted BSAR’s GoFundMe for the search I recently took part in, it was to provide the assistance he claimed he needed to “support the volunteer searchers.”

The photo sent on day 1 to my wife as I realized there was no supplies provided for my medical attention. I was starting to go into heat sickness at this point because my body temperature was too high. I had vomiting, headaches and diarrhea for five days.

I only learned that BSAR was not providing volunteer searchers with aid once I stepped into the desert with them. I have never seen any reports suggesting this was a possibility and would not have ventured out there had I seen them. I put myself and unfortunately two other women in danger to discover this. Once I realized the situation and that James and Abbey would not accept responsibility choosing instead to blame us, I pulled my group out of the searches. This occurred after I called for the meeting with BSAR on day three. Below is the text I sent to James on Wednesday evening notifying him that we would not continue and to take my photos off of his GoFundMe campaign. The picture of me on the search did not bother me so much as the other pictures from years past that had nothing to do with the event.

On day two and throughout our trip, I consulted with reporters who I have known for many years and trust. I knew of past run-ins they had with James but was never asked the details. I texted about the lack of supplies for volunteers and how dangerous their searches were asking if they had any thoughts or advice. They immediately got on the phone or texted with me and warned me to be careful. This is when I found out that James was not only verbally abusive to many reporters, but that he had sent them multiple long emails with abusive and intimidating language trying to frighten them into writing articles about BSAR’s work. I was advised to remain silent until we got out of the area and back to our homes. At the same time, I was communicating with others who are in academia and non-profit organizations. All had the same experiences with James and BSAR often using the term “unhinged.”

I messaged a journalist who I consider to be a mentor about what I was experiencing. While walking through the El Paso Historical Museum, they suddenly sent me a voicemail stating that they were worried about our safety. They pointed out that we were uncovering a possible fraud, possible misuse of donations and the possible use of migrant bodies for profit. This could provoke violence in someone who was afraid of the truth coming out. Again, we were advised to lay low until we got out of the area. James was staying just blocks from our hotel. I remembered just then that on the night I arrived, he had insisted on seeing my hotel room with Abbey. He knew exactly which room I was in.

Before leaving for the trip, I connected with a group in the El Paso Latino community to hold an event with BSAR. I was asked to include more about my work and my writing in the event, but I declined saying that it would be inappropriate in that moment. I was there to support and educate the community on the important work James and Abbey were doing. It was an attempt to not center my own work as an ex-agent who once enforced the very policies now killing these women. The event was scheduled for that Saturday at 6pm and flyers went out at least a week before. But once James realized we displeased with him, he chose to create a new event at the Catholic Diocese on the same day, at the same time. He did not notify me nor the event organizers. I found out roughly twenty-four hours before the event from his posts on Facebook and had to notify the organizers who had spent their limited funds to provide the space, food and pay employees.

BSAR’s impromptu Catholic Diocese event held to sell swag with their “buscadores” logo and talk about the bodies they find in the desert.

This left me to fill the gap that BSAR created with utter disregard for the community who offered to host them. I gave fifteen minutes to the elephant in the room and explained what had happened. I told them that I had been wrong to support BSAR and that I would write about this experience to hold myself accountable. I said that I had never in my life seen such an unprofessional and dangerous search and rescue group. This is when the community opened up to me about what they had endured because of BSAR’s actions. This was when I discovered they had driven a wedge in between the Latino community desperately trying to work with the Dona Ana County Sheriff and the New Mexico Office of Medical Investigator’s office. This is when I realized the community was afraid to speak out in fear that doing so would leave the human remains unrecovered. I spoke for over two hours and took all questions. When I returned home, I gave $500 of your subscriptions from my Substack back to the group to cover their costs.

If you have been verbally abused, gaslit and intimidated, then you know the fear and anxiety that creates. I spent the week worried if we would make it back to our families, fearful there would be a banging on our hotel doors, on guard for a man who I now understood did this to nearly everyone around him, especially women. I questioned my own actions and doubted my own observations simply because I could not understand BSAR’s behavior. I constantly thought about how none of this had to be, but realized that it simply is because of one man’s egocentrism, anger and abuse.

My thoughts always return back to the people left in the desert. Even in their deaths, as they turn to bones, people are arguing about them. There is little I can do to remedy this except to tell the truth. I am an outsider; a former migra. I am not a part of the communities affected by this violence and in fact, took part in it. So, I obey their wishes to remain anonymous because they are the living who suffer the consequences.

For the reporters who have told me that they knew BSAR was doing this all along, the ones who now admit they have witnessed him verbally abuse other volunteers, we would not not gone out there had it been included in your articles. For the academics, after witnessing James call one bone a “body,” this now potentially calls your data into question if you have relied on his claims and you must conduct audits to rectify this. To the law enforcement and medical examiners, please reconsider and work with the local community groups who just want respectable and culturally sensitive recoveries.

While I cannot force James and Abbey to return your money, I can offer to reimburse you for my part in promoting their work. I give my sincerest apologies. You may contact me at jennbudd.net, provide your receipts and I will reimburse you from my own pocket. It is important to me to maintain my credibility, and I will find some way to make it happen. You may also rate Battalion Search and Rescue and make complaints on their GoFundMe campaign, their Facebook page and anywhere else you find them if you choose. To all my subscribers and for those who donated to my GoFundMe to send me out there to uncover the truth of why human remains are not being recovered, thank you. You made this painful exposure possible.

May the communities heal from this divisiveness. May the victims find their way home.