In Mexican Desert, Digging for a ‘Miracle’: Bringing the Missing Back Home NYT | Top Stories Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Fred Ramos 4 January 2025 at 18:00 Tens of thousands of people have vanished in northern Mexico, many because of cartel violence. An unlikely partnership offers families a form of closure. © Fred Ramos for The New York TimesIsabel García, a geophysicist at the Regional Center for Human Identification in Coahuila, Mexico, is part of a team that searches for and identifies human remains.