Mexico City.- The Government of
Mexico confirmed this Friday that
there are more than 130,000 people missing in the country, when presenting an updated report of the
National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons, while presenting the advances derived from the review and purification of the system.
“From 2006 to date, there are 130,178 records of people who remain with missing status,” specified Marcela Figueroa, head of the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, during the presidential press conference.
The official detailed that, from 1952 to 2026, there is a record of 394,645 missing persons, of whom 262,111 were located, that is, 66%, and of them 92% were found alive.
Furthermore, he explained that
the records since 2006 total 130,178 cases, divided into three groups according to the available information.
The first group, he said, “corresponds to 46,742, 36% of the total that do not have complete data”, which makes their search difficult.
The second are 40,308 cases (31%) with sufficient data and “activities after the date of their disappearance”, including marriages, civil procedures and registrations in the INE. It also reported that thanks to the new mechanisms, “5,269 people were already located” through direct verification.
The third group includes “43,128 cases, 33% of the total”, with complete data but no recent activity identified. In this last group, only 3,869 have an investigation file, while more than 26,000 are simple reports without a formal investigation.
Furthermore, he detailed that from October 2024 to March 2026, 31,946 people with reports of disappearance have been located.
Crime with two historical stages
Meanwhile, the
Undersecretary for Human Rights, Population and Migration, Arturo Medina, stressed recalled that this crime has two historical stages: the “dirty war”, linked to forced disappearance from the State between the years 1950 and 1990, and the wave initiated in 2006 with the “irresponsible war against drug trafficking”.
The official highlighted that, in 2025, following findings at Rancho Izaguirre, used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) as a forced training center, it was ordered to strengthen search capabilities and reform laws in coordination with collectives.
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In July of that year, reforms were published that establish the national search alert, the mandatory opening of investigation files from the first report, and the creation of tools such as the single identity platform and the strengthening of the National Forensic Data Bank.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, explained that upon receiving a report, “an alert is established with all the person’s data, which is distributed massively and instantly” to more than 500 institutions.
Furthermore, he emphasized that “it is mandatory for disappearance reports to include the opening of an investigation file” and detailed the creation of specialized units, the national database of files, and the single identity platform.
The federal government indicated that the
new legal reforms require a minimum of identity data from the first report, as well as the immediate opening of investigation files, with the aim of providing greater certainty to families.
