Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

2007).
The journeys most often documented in the literature are those involving
overland transits. In this context, migrants are highly likely to die or sustain injuries
as a result of environmental exposure (Martínez, Cobo and Narváez, 2015), face
encounters with criminal groups involved in kidnapping and extortion, or arrested
and deported by authorities. Not a single country in the Americas maintains
precise records involving migrant fatalities, injuries or assaults, reports and
numbers being simple approximations of a larger phenomenon. Furthermore,
there is not a unified, government-sponsored system to support the reporting of
migrant related deaths or disappearances, and methods to quantify these vary
across regions (IOM, 2014). 109 Yet the disappearance of hundreds of migrants in
transit through Mexico have been documented over a number of years, and the
findings of mass graves along the most traversed migrant routes (Izcara Palacios,
2012; Casillas, 2010a) serve as evidence of the lethal nature of many irregular
transits and the lack of governmental oversight. Migrants report coming across
human remains in the context of their journeys, or having lost friends or relatives
along the way to the environment, accidents or violence – fatalities that are far
from reflected in official counts. In this context, it is important to highlight that
the dangers faced by migrants in the context of their journeys are not solely the
result of the smuggler’s inability to provide guidance or support, but are also the
result of a combination of factors present in the migrant trail and which often
further increase the conditions of vulnerability faced by those in transit (Reineke
and Martínez, 2014). Humanitarian organizations along the migrant trail have,
for instance, reported a significant reduction in the number of migrants who
relied on their services and stayed at their shelters following the implementation
on the part of the Government of Mexico’s Plan Frontera Sur (REDODEM, 2014),
a change that suggests migrants opted for more hidden, remote routes in order
to avoid detections. While the Plan was advertised as a mechanism to enhance
the protection of migrant human rights, some organizations have noted it has
instead led to the arrest and deportation of larger number of migrants and
further increased their vulnerability (Guevara, 2015; WOLA, 2015).
In summary, irregular migration routes in Latin America run from south to
109
The efforts involving civil society – including the friends and families of missing and dead migrants – at
creating a mechanism that allows to account for missing and dead migrants must be acknowledged.
Multiple groups across the Americas, in collaboration with community organizations within the United
States and along the United States–Mexico border, have embarked in a series of continental, regional and
local efforts to devise standardized mechanisms that have allowed for the location of missing migrants and
the identification and recovery of human remains so that they can eventually be returned to their relatives.
The work of Centro Colibrí in Tucson, Arizona, the Committee of Missing Migrants’ Families from Progreso
in Honduras, and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, among many others, has been central in this
effort.
Migrant Smuggling Data and Research:
A global review of the emerging evidence base
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