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Families in southern Mexico’s Chiapas state have kept searching for clues after 40 migrants vanished in late December 2024 while moving along a maritime route used by smugglers toward the United States, leaving relatives in uncertainty and grief long after the trip began. The search has centered on San José El Hueyate, a town near the Guatemalan border, where people have scoured the pier and the surrounding area for information.
According to family accounts, the case began on Christmas Eve 2024, when Elianis Caridad Morejón Pérez, a young Cuban woman, called her mother and said she had put on a life jacket and was boarding a boat to travel from southern Mexico toward the United States. Her mother said the call was her final message from San José El Hueyate before she disappeared alongside 39 other migrants from Cuba, Honduras and Ecuador traveling the same dangerous sea route.
Earlier this year, Morejón Pérez’s mother, Isis Pérez, traveled to the village from outside Mexico with other relatives of the disappeared, according to accounts from people searching locally. The relatives visited the San José El Hueyate pier, traveled along the Pacific coast by boat, and canvassed merchants and residents for any information that could help narrow down what happened after the migrants boarded.
Relatives said that most people they spoke with could not offer concrete details. Many, however, recalled that before the start of the second Trump administration in January 2025, a steady flow of vehicles would arrive carrying migrants who were then transported by sea. They also linked the disappearance and the route’s changing pattern to shifts in U.S. enforcement after deportations increased, pushing migrants either back to home countries or toward third-party nations willing to accept them.
One family member, Óscar Hernández, said he traveled to Chiapas to locate his brother, who is among those missing. “As family members, we live in constant torment and anguish, longing to find them,” Hernández said, describing the search as ongoing despite the passage of months.
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, the AP report said. The project’s records show that more than half of those cases occurred in Mexico, illustrating how the journey’s danger can be concentrated in the country’s southern corridor before migrants move north.
In a separate point about how the route operates, the report said IOM research identified several smuggling seaports since 2021. Migrants typically board small, twin-engine boats in Puerto de Ocós, Guatemala, then stop to refuel and resupply in Chiapas ports including Puerto Madero, San José, Barra de Zacapulco and Paredón, before eventually disembarking in Salina Cruz or Huatulco, Oaxaca, to continue northward by land.
The report also described how some families believe the timing of the vanished group was tied to political uncertainty in the United States. Relatives said the 40 migrants who disappeared in late 2024 were trying to reach the United States before Trump’s second term began, fearing that more flexible immigration policies under former President Joe Biden would be dismantled.
Among those missing were Cubans Meiling Álvarez Bravo, 41, and her 15-year-old son, Samei Armando Reyes Álvarez. Julia Margarita Bravo Díaz, Álvarez Bravo’s mother and the boy’s grandmother, recounted that on Dec. 21, 2024, at 8 a.m., her daughter told her they were going to have breakfast because they were about to cross toward Mexico City by boat.
As families search for answers, they are also weighing how difficult it is to investigate at sea compared with land. Ana Enamorado, coordinator of the nonprofit Regional Network of Migrant Families, said the task becomes “exponentially more difficult at sea,” underscoring why relatives can struggle to find definitive information about what happens after boats depart.
Mexican authorities have said they have stepped up enforcement aimed at both drug trafficking and irregular migration. Between July and November 2025, the Mexican Navy rescued 22 migrants, according to the report—six from high-seas shipwrecks and 16 from land as they prepared to depart from Chiapas. In March, Mexican authorities said they increased high-seas surveillance alongside Guatemalan counterparts.
Even as they say they must eventually return to their home countries, the families told reporters they do not plan to stop seeking answers. “We are leaving with heavy hearts but with the hope of finding them,” Pérez said, asking for help “to search, help us find them.”