Migrants
FAFG has supported other countries, such as Mexico, in people identification processes.
Dozens of migrants have disappeared on their way to the United States. Now, FAFG will support Guatemala in its search and identification through forensic medicine. (Free Press Photo: EFE)
Guatemala will expand the search for missing migrants, mainly on the way to the United States, with the support of a local Forensic Medicine entity, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration (IGM) reported on Thursday, March 20.
The mechanism will consist of the sampling of DNA to relatives of Guatemalan migrants reported as missing. These will be prosecuted by the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), the IGM said in a statement.
The Foundation “will be responsible for processing the samples collected by the Institute staff to the relatives of victims, for their proper treatment and screening,” said the text.
The information will be used to “build instruments and processes that facilitate the search and identification of missing,” added the IGM.
FAFG is an institution that was born a year after the signing of the 1996 peace agreements in Guatemala. It has stood out for the identification of hundreds of missing victims during the internal armed conflict (1960–1996).
Between January and mid -March, 33 Guatemalan migrants were reported as missing, while in 2024 the figure was 117, according to official data.
Like the rest of Central America, Guatemala is part of the route used by thousands of migrants seeking to reach the United States, a country that hardened their immigration policies with the return of Republican Donald Trump to the Presidency, in January.
In recent weeks an inverse process has been booming: migrants marching through Central America to the south, after giving up arriving in the United States for fear of being deported and for the danger on the route, stalked by criminal gangs.