7,697 dead or missing.
That’s just the number tracked by the Missing Migrants Project, launched by the International Organization for Migration, from its inception in 2014 until March 2023. There are sure to be many more — stuck in the mud of the Darien Gap, dead somewhere in Mexico along the tracks of “The Beast,” under the waters of the Caribbean or baking in the Arizona desert, at the end of a journey that began thousands of miles south, in Tegucigalpa or Caracas.
The number will only grow as more people flee hunger and violence, authoritarianism and repression. Migrants are flocking out of Haiti and Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Between 2015 and 2020 the share of Venezuelans living outside Venezuela jumped from 2.5% to 19%. A quarter of Salvadoreans live outside El Salvador.
