On electrical poles, crosswalks, and the windows of small businesses throughout East Orlando are wilted posters of the same person: a petite woman with wavy, maroon hair and a bashful smile. Above her head reads in red: Missing Person. The public signs are tattered and smeared from Florida’s harsh sun rays and relentless thunderstorms, but the posters remain, a reminder that my sweet friend Paola Miranda-Rosa is still missing nearly three years after she disappeared.
Like the street placards, local police departments have all but abandoned the investigation into the then-31-year-old Puerto Rican’s vanishing. After a two-day search at the 7,000-acre Wekiwa Springs State Park in Apopka, Fla., where she was last seen swimming in a river in December 2021, detectives have sparingly explored leads into her disappearance or answered calls from Miranda-Rosa’s family.
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Across the United States, and especially in the South, there are thousands of cases much like Miranda-Rosa’s: missing Latina women and girls whose disappearances are rarely known or solved. Unlike non-Latine white women, their cases, as well as that of missing Black and Indigenous women, fail to receive merited attention and are not treated as seriously by law enforcement and media. In a 2018 report by criminologists Dr. Danielle Slakoff and Dr. Pauline K. Brennan, they found that white women victims received more repeated coverage than non-white women; the study also noted that the researchers weren't able to examine stories about Black and Latina women separately because coverage of missing Latinas is so underreported. It’s a phenomenon the late Afro-Panamanian journalist Gwen Ifill called “missing white woman’s syndrome” — and it’s, quite literally, preventing our women and girls from ever being found.
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"Across the United States, and especially in the South, there are thousands of cases much like Miranda-Rosa’s: missing Latina women and girls whose disappearances are rarely known or solved."
raquel reichard
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“More media coverage equates to more eyes looking for missing people. When missing people are not covered by the media or are mislabeled as ‘runaways,’ there are going to be less people looking for them,” Slakoff, an assistant professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento, tells Refinery29 Somos. “When a group of people — such as Latinas, or Black, or Indigenous women — is not discussed, it sends a message that these are people who are not worth fighting for or spending our resources on.”
But how do you call attention to a problem that can’t be quantified?
While data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reveals there are more missing Latine youth than any other ethnic or racial group, there is no accurate count of Latina women who are missing in the U.S. The National Crime Information Center (NCIC)’s Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics report notes that there are at least 21,759 missing Latinas, but experts believe this number to be much higher as neither the NCIC nor most police stations field ethnicity, thus lumping Latines solely into racial categories like white or Black. Additionally, countless cases of missing Latinas go underreported for various reasons, such as fear of law enforcement, immigration status, and cultural uncertainties.
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“There is a crisis indeed, and more effective data collection mechanisms must be implemented on the local, state, and national level,” Alba Villa, chief development officer at League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), tells Somos. “The data that does exist is telling. The data reveals a broader issue of inequity in how missing persons cases are addressed.” LULAC, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the country, has long used its resources to raise awareness about the disproportionate number of missing Latinas, push for legislative changes, and support families with legal assistance. Still, at present, there is no national organization dedicated to reuniting missing Latina/es with their loved ones or advocating for victims of unresolved cases.
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"When a group of people — such as Latinas, or Black, or Indigenous women — is not discussed, it sends a message that these are people who are not worth fighting for or spending our resources on."
Dr. Danielle Slakoff
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Andrea Miranda, Miranda-Rosa’s younger sister, says such work is crucial. Since her family reported her sister’s disappearance on December 19, Miranda has felt unsupported by the state of Florida. First, her mother, Ivonne Rosa, called the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, but she couldn’t communicate with the officers who came to her house because neither spoke Spanish, despite 56% of the population in the county identifying as Latine. When Miranda phoned in to translate for her mother, the family was told a detective would be assigned to the case and call them in the coming days. The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to Somos’ multiple requests for comment.
Knowing there was no time to waste as the first 24 hours after someone goes missing are the most crucial, the Miranda-Rosa family took matters into their own hands, calling on relatives, friends like me (I have known Miranda-Rosa for 20 years, first becoming close friends in high school), and the community to retrace Miranda-Rosa’s last route on her E-Pass and search the park. Two days later, a family friend located Miranda-Rosa’s vehicle stationed in an area where overnight parking is forbidden. Her keys, wallet, and phone were found inside her black 2011 Chevrolet HHR. Since the car was technically parked in Orange County, that police department joined the investigation and led the search, bringing in rescue dogs and drones. They ended the park search two days later because there were no signs of Miranda-Rosa. When they called off the probe, her sister fell to the ground.
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“I fainted. Those were two minutes that I don’t remember what happened. I just knew at that moment that the chances of finding her would be minimal,” Miranda, 31, tells Somos.
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"I just knew at that moment that the chances of finding her would be minimal."
andrea miranda
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From there, working with the state became a new kind of nightmare: detectives stopped picking up the family’s phone calls that same month. There weren’t probes into community leads. And Osceola County, which was tasked with leading the investigation, often failed to collaborate with Orange County or the private investigator (PI) the family hired. Eventually, Miranda and Rosa presented their topics of concern to Osceola County Sheriff Marcos R. Lopez, but nothing changed. When we reached out to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office for comment, we did not receive a response. Orange County stated that it is unable to comment on the case because it falls outside of its jurisdiction and noted that it does not “have any information about the missing person or about the Osceola County case.”
Without the help of the state, the family had to reach into their savings accounts and create a GoFundMe campaign to finance their own investigation. Paying for a PI, posters, billboards, rewards, and more has cost the working-class family about $20,000. “The system just feels so wrong and so broken,” Miranda says. “I remember being told that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and I tried to be squeaky, but every time I'd lose a part of me. I think if I wasn't a mother, I could have been louder and made a bigger mess of things, but it sucks because there’s no resources. I can’t stop living my life. Who is going to take care of my daughter? My mom has to work. My dad has to work. We have no resources to continue to search. We have to take care of ourselves because the system won’t take care of us. The police won’t save us.”
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Miranda believes the family’s Puerto Rican background and humble finances as well as her sister’s mental health impacted the way law enforcement treated the investigation. The Osceola County Sheriff Department's initial missing person poster noted that Miranda-Rosa lived with schizophrenia, a disclosure the family didn’t agree to and claimed was a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violation. While the county later removed that detail, the media had already picked up the story and continued to report on Miranda-Rosa's mental health. The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to Somos’ multiple requests for comment.
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"We have to take care of ourselves because the system won’t take care of us. The police won’t save us."
andrea miranda
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“When we told the detective about her mental health disorder, I thought it would help the case. I thought there would be concern. It was the complete opposite. It took an ax to the situation,” Miranda says, pointing to the way her sister’s mental health, insead of her disappearance, became the focus of her story.
In cases of missing women who are racially or ethnically marginalized, it’s not uncommon for the media to look for and report on details that portray them negatively or attempt to blame them for their disappearances. Additionally, Black and Latina girls are more likely to be deemed as runaways rather than missing. In their report, Dr. Slakoff and Dr. Brennan also found that stories about non-Latine white women and girl victims are more likely to contain sympathetic narratives than stories about Black and Latina women and girl victims.
“The Latina and Black women and girl victims are more likely to be portrayed as risk-takers and as ‘bad’ women, and their victimization was normalized through descriptions of their unsafe environments,” Slakoff says.
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Such has been the case for Selena Garcia, a Mexican American woman who went missing from her home in Lilburn, GA, on October 9, 2022, at 24 years old. Zahaida Garcia, Selena’s older sister, reported Selena missing the next day, calling 911 and then going to the Gwinnett County Police Station later that same day because she felt like her concerns weren’t being taken seriously. Garcia alleges she was never assigned a detective and has had inconsistent communication with the sergeant, though Sergeant Collin Flynn alleges an investigator has been assigned to the case and is following up on leads as they develop. Garcia says she updates law enforcement about details and developments in her sister’s disappearance through a digital portal she was given, but rarely hears back.
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"The Latina and Black women and girl victims are more likely to be portrayed as risk-takers and as ‘bad’ women."
Dr. Danielle Slakoff
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For four months, Selena’s disappearance was deemed a runaway, despite Garcia’s insistence that her sister, whom she spoke with daily, wouldn’t flee on her own volition. In February 2023, when Selena’s vanishing was finally classified as a missing person’s case, police descriptions noted that she had many tattoos and emphasized that she had a marijuana plant inked on her hand, a tattoo that Garcia says her younger sister had actually covered up with a rose and, thus, wasn’t relevant. The Gwinnett County Police Department did not comment on why they’ve continued to use this in its descriptions of Selena. Even more, most local news media reported that Selena had previously been incarcerated on charges of tampering with evidence, criminal trespass for unlawful purposes, and giving a false name, address, or birthdate to a law enforcement officer.
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“It’s clear that they just didn’t care, and it’s not just because she was in jail. She’s not white. Even if you’re white, you can commit a crime and they’ll still look for you. But she’s Latina,” Garcia, 31, tells Somos. “A lot of us make mistakes. She’s young. She doesn’t have kids or a husband. She was living her life like any other 20-something-year-old: not making the best decisions. I hate that that’s the focus. That’s what’s in bold. She is missing. The point is to find her and find out what happened.”
According to Dr. Slakoff, this kind of victim-blaming doesn’t just make audiences care less about the missing person, but it also works to make them feel better about themselves and their own perception of safety.
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"She is missing. The point is to find her and find out what happened."
Zahaida Garcia
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“Victim-blaming serves to make ourselves feel safer and feel better. We tell ourselves, ‘nothing like that would happen to me, because I wouldn’t date someone with an arrest history, I wouldn’t walk around alone in that neighborhood at night, I wouldn’t engage in sex work,’” Dr. Slakoff says. “Underlying victim-blaming is this need to think we are in control of what happens to us — if we are smart enough, or careful enough, then we can avoid harm. We judge people for their choices, when the reality is that no one is perfect. There is no perfect victim. And victim-blaming takes away the focus on the perpetrator — who is 100% responsible.”
With little support from the Gwinnett County Police Department, Garcia and her family, like the Miranda-Rosas, have had to tap into their own resources, financing two private investigators and working closely with WeLatinosGA, a local nonprofit advocating for missing Latines and victims across Georgia. The organization, which initially launched as a collective called the Hispanics United Alliance for The Missing, was founded in February 2023 after the bodies of two missing Latine teens — Susana Morales, 16, and Rodrigo Floriano, 17 — were found about 20 miles apart from each other in north central Georgia. While the cases were unrelated, they reflected two crises in the state: the rise of missing Latines and the minimal care and resources put into finding them.
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“We were so angry,” Melissa Marreo, co-founder, CFO, and COO of WeLatinosGA, tells Somos. “We needed to bring awareness to our people. If no one else would do it for us, then we had to do it.”
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"We judge people for their choices, when the reality is that no one is perfect. There is no perfect victim. And victim-blaming takes away the focus on the perpetrator — who is 100% responsible."
Dr. Danielle Slakoff
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Since they started operating, WeLatinosGA has helped 15 families of missing people and five victims. They support by being an advocate when families communicate with law enforcement, providing interpretation and translation, funding missing persons flyers, organizing protests, and securing media coverage. They also provide community education, oftentimes informing locals and police departments about the prevalence of missing Latines being mislabeled as runaways.
For instance, when Morales, a Gwinnett County teen, was reported missing on July 26, 2022, local police initially considered her a runaway, stating there was no indication she was held against her will. As such, Morales' family, who had received a text message from the teen stating she was on her way home the night of her disappearance, began to search on their own. Then in February 2023, Morales' skeletal remains were found scattered about 20 miles away from where she was last seen. On June 12, 2024, former Doraville Police Officer Miles Bryant, who worked as a courtesy officer at the Gwinnett County apartment complex Morales visited the night she went missing, was found guilty for her murder and kidnapping.
“If it was a white girl who sent that text and didn’t make it home, they would have been all over Georgia looking for her,” Marreo says. “But even if they are runaways, at the end of the day, we still have a parent whose child is missing … and needs to be rescued.”
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The system doesn’t just fail the families of missing Latinas; it has also repeatedly let down the women who needed their help. This is, perhaps, most infamously evident in the case of Vanessa Guillén, the 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier who was bludgeoned to death by another soldier, Aaron David Robinson, on April 22, 2020. Before the Mexican American servicewoman went missing, she sought refuge in a superior, informing them that she had been sexually harassed twice at the Fort Hood (renamed Fort Cavazos in 2023), TX, armory where she was stationed. Investigations that occurred after her death found that her supervisor failed to report the harassment and other officials did not take appropriate action. “Leaders, regardless of rank, are accountable for what happens in their units and must have the courage to speak up and intervene when they recognize actions that bring harm to our soldiers and to the integrity of our institution,” former Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy said in a statement following the findings of an independent review into leadership at the base, which led to 14 leaders and soldiers being suspended or relieved, in December 2020.
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"If it was a white girl who sent that text and didn’t make it home, they would have been all over Georgia looking for her."
Melissa Marreo
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At the time, LULAC launched the "La Quiero Viva" campaign to demand justice for Guillén and advocate for changes in military protocols, including championing the "I Am Vanessa Guillén Act," which helps protect victims of sexual violence in the military by ensuring allegations are investigated independently.
Now the phrase "La Quiero Viva," first stated by Guillén’s mother Gloria, has become a rallying cry for the families of other Latina women and girls who are missing. Unfortunately, in most cases, these cries go unheard. But the lives of our missing women and girls matter. Their cases shouldn’t go cold or uncounted. Their names and faces deserve to be broadcasted on television screens across the country, unmarred. And their stories should make audiences sick, with that nausea pushing us all to advocacy.
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Garcia says if she could use one word to describe her younger sister Selena it would be “kind.” Miranda, meanwhile, says “caring” best summarizes her older sister. “She knew what you needed before you needed it, and she provided it,” Miranda says. And that’s also what both sisters are asking from their respective states and country: kindness for the loved ones of the missing and care toward every investigation, regardless of ethnicity, race, immigration status, income, mental health, or past experiences.
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"My bubble of the beautiful U.S.A we live in was popped. It’s fake. We live under the impression that we are protected, that we are free. But it’s a façade."
andrea miranda
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“But our country isn’t like that,” Miranda says. “My bubble of the beautiful U.S.A we live in was popped. It’s fake. We live under the impression that we are protected, that we are free. But it’s a façade.”
For me, that image withers with every tattered missing persons poster that I see of Miranda-Rosa, or just Paola to me. Each faded, ripped, and crumpled sign reflects how this country values, or devalues, my friend and the countless Latinas who have disappeared here.