BREAKING🚨 The U.S. has deported more than 350 unaccompanied Mexican children on planes to cities up to 2,000 miles from their homes. Some have now disappeared.
The flights started in December 2025. The kids on board had crossed into the U.S. without parents or guardians, and most come from towns along the northern border. Instead of being returned there, they were put on planes to Tapachula and Villahermosa near the Guatemalan border, and more recently to Mérida on the Yucatán Peninsula.
Human rights organizations laid all of this out on Aug. 3 at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington. They have confirmed more than 350 cases. Nobody in either government has told them the real total.
"It doesn't make sense to send a minor 2,000 miles from their family member, ever," said Savi Arvey of Human Rights First. "That's just never appropriate."
The children land in shelters that were built to handle migrants heading north, not kids from Tamaulipas. Because some of them were recruited by rival criminal groups back home, staff have to keep them separated from each other. Many families cannot afford to get their child home, so some have been stuck in the south for months.
They have also been going missing. In Tabasco in late July, seven more teenagers from other states were reported disappeared, six from Tamaulipas and one from San Luis Potosí. Blanca Navarrete, who directs Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción in Ciudad Juárez, says her group has information suggesting three children died while traveling north to reach their communities. "We're worried because the authorities haven't said anything or announced any investigation," she said.
Arvey said cartels have paid for some children's flights north in order to recruit them again.
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