For a decade, the nonprofit Colibrí Center for Human Rights worked with state agencies and humanitarian organizations to identify migrants whose remains were found along the U.S.-Mexico border. As part of this work, the organization managed a database of DNA samples from families across the U.S. and Latin America, facilitating hundreds of successful identifications. But in 2024, the database itself vanished. With support from the Fund, Gabb Schivone and Caroline Tracey investigated the whereabouts of the database and revealed both the legal roadmap to recovering it and the potential violations of federal nonprofit law caused by its disappearance and possible destruction.
A DNA archive critical to identifying missing migrants has itself gone missing, grantees find
