Migrating and Vanishing
There’s no exact data on the number of migrants that go missing in Central America, Mexico and the United States on the perilous journey to the American dream. Their remains and belongings are kept in cardboard boxes in a U.S. morgue, hidden in the desert or buried with no name in a distant cemetery from their homeland. But their lives are not forgotten by families that search for the remains of their loved ones with the support of non-governmental organizations.
This investigative series was produced by an international team of journalists reporting across Guatemala, Mexico and the U.S. It sheds light on the untold stories of migrants who have vanished and uncovers an undercount of the missing by governmental institutions that fail at assisting in the search and providing answers to the families, often leaving a state of interrupted mourning.
In one Arizona morgue alone in the U.S. there are more than 300 unidentified remains of migrants. Their bones and belongings sit in cardboard boxes in a nondescript trailer in a parking lot.