TIJUANA, Mexico — People wearing shirts that feature pictures of either their son, husband, daughter, or another family member gathered at a medium-sized compound that features a view overlooking the hills on the eastern edge of Baja California’s largest city.
The yellow-orange house and walls is situated on the corner of a dirt road and looks like any other house, but it serves as a grim example of the tragic side of Mexico.
For years, it was a property used by the cartel to dissolve its victims with acid in order to leave no evidence behind. When authorities eventually raided the compound, over 1,200 human remains were dissolved there. The practice of dissolving bodies is nicknamed pozole, which refers to a traditional stew popular in Mexico.
Today, the compound is a memorial for the victims of the past and people who have gone missing since then.
Banners and posters for missing Mexicans at the memorial went as far back as 2007 and as recently as 2023. The compound’s wall lined with flyers has extra space for new flyers to go up. In Spanish, they are known as Los Desaparecidos, The Disappeared.
While it appears the number of murders in Mexico has dropped in recent years, it seems a reason for part of that dip is due to bodies increasingly never being found.
As noted in CrashOut, both 2024 and 2025 had more than 12,000 disappearances throughout the country.
That is the backdrop for the families who know about the problem all too well. The stories are often the same: Their relatives leave to go about their day and they never make it home. An investigation by local authorities technically starts only to then not be given any answers or updates. The people who are left behind say the government at all levels have abandoned them or act like they don’t care about their cases.
It is this frustration and sadness that leads them to back an idea that seems radical to many Mexicans: They support President Donald Trump using the U.S. military to attack the cartels who are largely responsible for the disappearances.
“The Mexican government hides behind national sovereignty and the non-intervention of foreign governments. But from my point of view, if we have a problem, we must accept help,” said Fernando Ceguera Flores, president of the Association United for the Disappeared of Baja California.
“I do agree that there should be cooperation between countries to attack the scourge of drug trafficking and the missing persons issue together,” he added.
“The way we are here in this country, we truly need to grab onto everything we can, whatever help it may be for us, because really, the government hasn’t done much,” said Maria Dolores Hernandez Loera.
Hernandez Loera’s son, Humberto, went missing in 2019 three months after arriving in Tijuana with his wife and infant daughter.
“I do believe we need help from other places to be able to fight these people because, unfortunately, they are taking our youth…My son was only 21 years old,” she continued.
During our interview, Humberto’s daughter walked over to stand by Hernandez Loera. There is no question the young girl is his daughter given they both have the same blue eyes.
“They should already do something because here in Mexico, they don’t. If [Trump] is going to start helping us tackle this issue I don’t see it as a bad thing,” said Claudia Lopez Ayala, who is lookin for her son, Christopher Giovanni Lopez Lopez.
Ayala’s son went missing in September 2022.
Ayala supports the U.S. taking action because of the Mexican government and law enforcement colluding with the cartels.
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“Look, in 2011, when we started the association, there were only two associations in Baja California…So ten or eleven years passed in which we were working alone. What changed? The number of collectives increased,” Flores explained. “Why? Because people started disappearing” all over the state.
The only thing that has changed, Flores said, is there are now 40 groups in Baja California who are dedicated to finding missing Mexicans. Due to how much time has passed and how many times Trump has threatened to attack the cartels, Flores does not believe Trump is going to do anything significant anytime soon.
The topic of U.S. intervention in Mexico is a hot-button issue. Reasons for the strong opposition to the idea go as far back as the Mexican-American War in 1848, which resulted in Mexico giving up its claim to much of what is now the American West and Southwest.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly declared that she will not allow any foreign military on Mexico soil in response to Trump repeatedly stating the U.S. might carry out attacks against Mexican cartels on its own.
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with their military. We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will be no invasion. That’s ruled out. Absolutely ruled out...there is no risk that they are going to invade our territory,” Sheinbaum said during a press conference in August 2025.
Sheinbaum was recently protested by family members of Los Desaparecidos in the border state of Nuevo Leon during a political event. Like the groups in Tijuana, protesters were demanding more federal action for missing persons cases.
Due to the lack of action by authorities, the family members of the disappeared take it upon themselves to look for their loved ones’ remains’ on their own, which put them in the crosshairs of the cartels who don’t want them to find evidence of their crimes.
Hernandez Loera said they have been shot at while searching for remains or get threats for going on different properties, but “we cling on because we know there are bodies there.”
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