EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – New Mexico authorities have worked to recover human skeletal remains and personal items from one site in the desert west of Santa Teresa, which volunteer group Battalion Search and Rescue (BSAR) said is one of over 20 sites they have discovered and reported on multiple occasions to the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office (DASO) with nothing being done.  Just over a week ago, volunteers of Armadillos Search and Rescue (ASR), a humanitarian group based in San Diego, California, that supports migrants and does similar work to BSAR, flew into El Paso to observe one of the sites BSAR had reported.  During the morning of Nov. 17, Cesar Ortigoza -- a co-founder of ASR -- said he and other volunteers walked approximately 3 miles into the desert to the site, where they were able to observe the same remains and personal items our KTSM crews captured back in September.  Ortigoza said they made the trip after James Holeman from BSAR told him that they had found an identification card by the remains, which seemed to match the description of a woman ASR had listed as a missing person.  “So we went out there and we happened to find the IDs, the birth certificate and some clothing that she was wearing when she was coming through the desert,” Ortigoza said. "Her sister told us that when Ada Guadalupe was crossing she was wearing Adidas pants." Courtesy: Armadillos Search and Rescue ASR had listed Ada Guadalupe Lopez Montoya, a migrant from El Salvador, as a missing person through their social media platforms since the summer of 2023, when they began helping her family try to locate her.   Courtesy: Armadillos Search and Rescue Lopez Montoya’s family informed them that she last communicated with them on June 27, 2023, as she crossed the border through Ciudad Juarez en route to El Paso.  Ortigoza said he and other ASR volunteers arrived at the site at approximately 10:30 a.m., and reported it to local authorities at around 11 a.m.  He said that a deputy from DASO arrived at the scene about an hour and a half later who informed them that they would have officers from the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator (OMI) en route in approximately an hour and a half.  It was not until eight hours after they reported the remains to police, at approximately 7 p.m., that authorities arrived at the scene to recover the remains, Ortigoza said.  “We wanted to make sure that the remains didn’t just stay there. We wanted to make sure they were picked up,” Ortigoza said. “This lady, the last time her family knew about her, was back in June 2023. So if the remains belong to her, she has been there almost one year and a half. It's been a long time for her family to be waiting for her." During an interview with KTSM earlier this month, Dona Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart responded to the allegations that her office was ignoring the multiple reports of these sites.  Stewart said at the time that they were not going to take these reports “very seriously” if BSAR volunteers were not going to wait at the sites for her deputies to respond, and that her office did not have the requisite resources to attend to all the reports.  KTSM reached back out to Stewart to inquire if her office would reconsider changing their approach if the remains recovered by the OMI do in fact lead to identifying the missing woman.  "We do respond when we have specific (information) to find bones or body parts, ID, etc. Bear in mind, they are usually decomposed. Sometimes, our detectives can't go out for a while and if the parts have been there for weeks or months or years, not much is going to change in a few hours. You said we responded, but it took several hours. If we are talking about other groups calling in coordinates, that is a hit-or-miss effort at best. I have 16 detectives and 3,800 square miles and 125,000 people to serve. How should we handle it differently, do you think?” Stewart said.  Any investigation into the remains that were recovered over a week ago now lands in the hands of the OMI since it was not reported as a crime, Stewart said.  “This info is in possession of OMI. There is a process through the State Department to report back to the presumed country of origin as to their citizen's remains being discovered in the U.S. Absent evidence of any crime, other than federal crimes, we would not continue any investigation in matters like this,” Stewart said.  Now that they wait for the OMI to conduct their work, Ortigoza said he is hopeful that if in fact the remains do belong to Lopez Montoya, that it can bring her family closure.  “I know nobody wants to hear that their family members passed. But if it's her, I hope she goes back home. And she can finally rest in peace. And then she gets out of this in a decent place so their family can go out there and at least, bring some flowers and talk to her, " Ortigoza said.  KTSM submitted a records request to the OMI to confirm if the remains they recovered match the Salvadoran woman. We will update this story as soon as we receive a response.