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Missing migrants

Americas deaths and disappearances

The Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration recorded 409 deaths in the Americas in 2025, the lowest annual total since it began collecting data in 2014. The figure may change before it is finalized in mid-2026, because reports from officials arrive late.

Americas · 2025

Annual deaths and disappearances in North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean combined, 2014 to 2025, drawn from the open Missing Migrants Project dataset as updated in late September 2026. Recent years are revised as late reports arrive, so the last bar can differ from the totals quoted in the text.

Annual deaths and disappearances in North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean combined, 2014 to 2025, drawn from the open Missing Migrants Project dataset as updated in late September 2026. Recent years are revised as late reports arrive, so the last bar can differ from the totals quoted in the text.

Chart by Fix Planet from Missing Migrants Project data of the International Organization for Migration, via the Humanitarian Data Exchange, licence Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/). Dataset page: https://data.humdata.org/dataset/missing-migrants-project-data

What it is

The count covers people who died or went missing during migration in North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. It includes crossings of the border between the United States and Mexico and the Darién jungle between Colombia and Panama. In February 2026 the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration reported 409 deaths in the Americas in 2025.

Why it matters

The Americas count fell sharply, from 1,272 in 2024. The organization says this is likely due to fewer people taking dangerous irregular pathways, such as crossing the Darién jungle or the border between the United States and Mexico. Its annual report of April 2026 gives numbers for the movement itself: Panama recorded 3,032 irregular arrivals through the Darién in 2025 against more than 300,000 in 2024, and United States authorities reported about 179,800 interceptions at the southwest border against more than 1.6 million in 2024.

How to read it

Read 409 as a provisional figure. The organization says that delays in reporting from officials mean the 2025 numbers for the Americas will probably not be final until mid-2026. Later versions of the count differ slightly: the annual report of April 2026 gives 408, and the open dataset now lists 428 for the four regions of the Americas. The comparison to make is with 2024 and earlier years, when between about 600 and 1,500 deaths a year were recorded.

Limits

Part of the fall may come from missing records. The annual report says that for the border between the United States and Mexico, end-of-year data on migrant deaths had not been reported by either country, so the recorded deaths there dropped from 561 in 2024 to 160 in 2025, a smaller fall than the near tenfold fall in interceptions. It also notes that recording deaths in the Darién has always been hard because access to the route is difficult: 10 were recorded in 2025 against 174 in 2024.

Sources