Five rideshare drivers missing after trip to border

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Relatives of five rideshare drivers are demanding answers five days after their loved ones disappeared in the border town of Ojinaga, Mexico.

The five men left the city of Chihuahua early last Thursday in separate vehicles and their relatives lost contact with them.

The Chihuahua Attorney General's Office identified them as Abigael Ramos Gonzalez, Abigael Ramos Torres, Fabian Ramos Torres, Sandra Salais Calzadillas and Francisco Ivan Flores Hernandez. The attorney general's office said the cars left the state capital at 11 a.m. Some called, texted or used phone apps at 4 p.m. to tell relatives they were leaving Ojinaga but never returned to Chihuahua.

Relatives say they located four of the five rental cars in a vacant lot in Ojinaga, about a three-hour drive (172 miles) northeast of the state capital. The last GPS location of the fifth vehicle, still missing, was near a ranch called Alamo El Chapo.

On Monday, the families staged a protest in a park across from the Chihuahua city government palace, saying they were the ones leading the investigation because authorities had been slow to respond.

“We went to the prosecutor's office on Saturday to see if they had any information, but they said they don't work on weekends and that the elections (on Sunday) were inconveniencing them,” Pablo Martinez, Sandra Salais' son, said during the protest broadcast on social media. “We are here to ask them to speed up the search, to take into account what we have learned and to check the GPS of the cars and the Sentinel platform (security cameras).”

The attorney general's office said it has assigned state police officers and missing persons unit specialists to investigate the case.

Speaking to Mexican media, Deputy Attorney General Heliodoro Araiza said Monday that the four vehicles had been sent to an impound and that “all relevant investigations” were underway. He told El Sol de Ojinaga newspaper that authorities do not rule out that the drivers were transporting migrants to the border.

Ojinaga is located across the Rio Grande from Presidio, Texas. The city gained international media attention in October 2021, when 13 Mexican migrants were kidnapped and killed as part of rival drug cartels' fight for control of migrant smuggling in the Chihuahua-Ojinaga corridor. Ten of the bodies were found two years later in a clandestine grave in the nearby town of Coyame.

In a Facebook group made up of Mexican entrepreneurs from the Uber and DiDi platforms, members posted numerous messages of solidarity with the families of the missing. One of them, however, posted a warning: “These are the consequences of transporting (people) without papers. It’s a federal crime and with the mafia, it’s a beating – at least.”