The opening scene is as harrowing as it is prognostic: Inside a modest brick building that houses the South Texas Human Rights Center, Eddie Canales, a retired union organizer turned migrant rights activist, receives a phone call. The voice on the other end alerts him to the sighting of a migrant somewhere in the thicket of a private Texas ranch—and at that point, a solemn look settles on his face. When he arrives at the location, the truth is revealed to the viewer: Canales was led to the site of an unidentified corpse. Now it’s his job to find out who it was.
Co-directed and produced by Jeff Bemiss and Lisa Molomot, Missing in Brooks County is a documentary that follows two American families coming to Brooks County, Texas, in search of loved ones lost while attempting to cross into the United States. One family has been searching for their son, Homero Roman Gómez, for two years. Roman Gómez grew up in the United States with a brother who was a U.S. resident and two other siblings who were citizens, but he was himself undocumented. He was deported back to his origin country of Mexico after receiving a traffic ticket and went missing while attempting to return. The film also follows the family of 18-year-old Juan Maceda Salazar, who also crossed from Mexico into the United States to reunite with his cousin Moises Zavala. Both Roman Gómez and Maceda Salazar went missing while trying to circumvent the busiest border checkpoint in Texas. According to the film, the area of Brooks County also sees the highest quantity of migrant deaths in the country. Describing the area he oversees, which includes that checkpoint, the sheriff of Brooks County calls it “the largest cemetery in the United States.”
