On Christmas Eve 2024, Elianis Caridad Morejón Pérez, a young Cuban woman, told her mother she was boarding a boat from southern Mexico to the United States. She disappeared along with 39 other migrants from Cuba, Honduras, and Ecuador while traveling a maritime route known as one of the most dangerous paths used by smugglers.
Earlier this month, her mother, Isis Pérez, arrived in San José El Hueyate, a town in Chiapas near the Guatemalan border, to search for her alongside other relatives. They scoured the pier, navigated the Pacific coast by boat, and canvassed local merchants and residents for any information. No one could provide concrete details, but many recalled that before the start of the second Trump administration in January 2025, a steady flow of vehicles would arrive carrying migrants who would then be transported by sea.
That migratory flow plummeted last year as the U.S. ramped up deportations, sending migrants to their home countries or third-party nations.
"As family members, we live in constant torment and anguish, longing to find them," said Óscar Hernández, a Honduran man who traveled to Chiapas hoping to locate his brother, who is among the disappeared.
The International Organization for Migration's Missing Migrants Project has recorded the disappearance or death of 11,475 migrants on the route from South America to the United States since 2014. More than half were in Mexico. According to a recent IOM report, several smuggling seaports have been identified since 2021. Migrants typically board small, twin-engine boats in Puerto de Ocós, Guatemala, stopping to refuel and resupply in Chiapas ports such as Puerto Madero, San José, Barra de Zacapulco, and Paredón, before disembarking in Salina Cruz or Huatulco, Oaxaca, to continue northward by land.
The 40 migrants who vanished in late 2024 were racing to reach the U.S. before President Donald Trump's second term, fearing he would dismantle more flexible immigration policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden, according to family members.
Cubans Meiling Álvarez Bravo, 41, and her 15-year-old son, Samei Armando Reyes Álvarez, were among those who vanished. "On Dec. 21, 2024, at 8 a.m., she told me they were going to have breakfast because they were about to cross toward Mexico City by boat," recounted Julia Margarita Bravo Díaz, Meiling's mother. Her daughter and grandson had flown from Cuba to Nicaragua before traveling overland through Honduras and Guatemala into Mexico, unaware that their path would eventually take them by sea.
Searching for missing persons in Mexico is a grueling task on land, but it becomes exponentially more difficult at sea, said Ana Enamorado, coordinator of the nonprofit Regional Network of Migrant Families. Between July and November 2025, the Mexican Navy rescued 22 migrants — six from high-seas shipwrecks and 16 from land as they prepared to embark from Chiapas. In response, Mexican authorities said in March they had increased high-seas surveillance alongside Guatemalan authorities to disrupt both drug trafficking and irregular migration.
The mothers and relatives of the 40 migrants who vanished in late December 2024 say that while they must return to their home countries, their search will not end. They remain committed to seeking answers from afar. "We are leaving with heavy hearts but with the hope of finding them," said Pérez. "We ask that you help us search, help us find them."
