Mexico says government data show signs of life for some missing people

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Mexico’s government said it has identified signs of life for thousands of people registered as missing, using a records-crosschecking method that officials say can separate cases that show “some activity” from those that do not. In a report released Friday, officials said they found activity in government databases for 40,367 people—about 31% of the country’s roughly 130,000 registered missing people—since those individuals were reported missing. Officials said those findings indicate that the people might still be alive, while the government also said it marked 5,269 people as “found” after using the same approach with the help of search groups.

The government’s effort is embedded in an ongoing dispute over how Mexico tracks disappearances, which has intensified since the start of the drug war in 2006. While authorities argue that figures can be inflated or overcounted because of errors and duplicate reports at the local level, families and search groups say the number of missing people is likely far higher and that data gaps and failures by local governments have left them without reliable information.

Mexican security official Marcela Figueroa said the government arrived at its findings by cross-referencing indicators including vaccination records, birth and marriage registries, and tax filings. She said that by matching those records to missing-person reports, officials identified 40,367 cases showing some activity in government records since the time they were reported missing. Figueroa said that suggests those individuals “might still be alive,” and she said the government then consulted with search groups to track down 5,269 people and mark them as “found.”

Figueroa described many of those cases as “voluntary absences.” She provided examples, including men leaving partners for another woman being reported as missing and women running away from abusive relationships. “Not all disappearances are the same,” she said, adding that the government was “constantly working to locate Mexico’s missing people.” Figueroa also said the government was more vigorously monitoring local prosecutor’s offices that have failed to investigate and to document missing-person cases accurately, and she said officials were seeking to increase the number of cases under investigation.

The report quickly drew criticism from search collectives that have for years challenged Mexico’s registry methodology. Héctor Flores, a leader of a search collective in Jalisco, said the report was “misleading” and that the government’s methodology lacked transparency. Groups aligned with families in the disappearance crisis have accused the government of “hide and downplay” tactics, arguing that revisions to the registry can reduce real cases from the list and hinder search efforts.

Flores, whose 19-year-old son was forcibly disappeared by agents from the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office in 2021, said the Friday report was “just another attempt by the administration to hide and downplay the numbers and continue to paint a picture that doesn’t reflect the reality of what we’re living through.” The AP report also said figures shared Friday included cases with missing data—such as names and dates—that make searches impossible, and it said other registered disappearances showed no activity in government databases.

The dispute over Mexico’s missing-person counts also touches broader questions about how violence and impunity have shaped disappearances, including allegations of both cartel tactics and state involvement in some cases. The AP report said forcibly disappearing people has been a tactic used by cartels to consolidate control through terror while concealing homicide numbers, and it cited mass disappearance cases in central Mexico that have been tied to state actors.

Human rights and family-support organizations said the latest release does not resolve their concerns and may increase uncertainty for those still searching. María Luisa Aguilar, director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, which accompanies families searching for missing people, said Friday that each census has been marked by fierce criticism and that revisions have at times left families feeling uncertain about whether changes will set back the search effort. Aguilar said the approach welcomed in the report is not enough because it “minimizes the state’s responsibility” and offers few solutions or specific information to family members.

In a statement, the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center said it welcomed efforts to make the data more reliable, but it said the way officials framed the figures “minimizes the state’s responsibility” and does little to aid families. The statement said families often have to continue searches themselves, at times at the cost of their lives. It also said: “Centering the conversation around a crisis of this magnitude on numbers, it’s not the response that families of missing persons need after 20 years of such a sharp increase in disappearances,” and it added, “When we see reports like the one today, it proves the victims right: What they want is to make the number of disappeared persons smaller.”