Applying knowledge graphs: Migrant decedent case trajectories in South Texas

The phenomenon of migrant death at the Texas-Mexico border is well documented, but questions remain as concerns its spatial distribution and what happens to human remains after discovery. To start exploring these questions, we developed a knowledge graph (KG) approach to aggregate qualitative information concerning migrant death and elucidate patterns that would otherwise remain under- or undetected. With a dataset of 370 South Texas newspaper articles, we analyzed for patterns in the trajectories of migrant case outcomes. The results of our study highlighted the United States Border Patrol's jurisdictional purview, most notable along the Rio Grande River and during the summer months. For events away from the Rio Grande, a far more diverse array of entities may be involved in a migrant death case, including local law enforcement and, most notably, what we term Situational Participants, such as a local who happened upon a decedent. We discuss the value of implementing domain-specific KGs in conjunction with spatial analysis and their great potential to help provide fuller insights into the entities involved and successive actions that characterize forensic investigation in South Texas.