A/HRC/59/49 remote buildings guarded by individuals believed to be State agents and later taken to the Evros River to be pushed back into Turkïye.89 F. Family separations 50. Systematic family separations in administrative detention or during interception operations at sea, refusal of State authorities to inform family members of the whereabouts of their relatives, or inability to determine their whereabouts, including of children, because they were not registered at the time of separation, are practices that effectively disappear migrants for short to extended periods of time.90 Family separations are further aggravated by the lack of or the delayed registration of newborn children in countries of transit. 91 51. In some reported cases in the United States, detained migrant families are subjected to family separation when one or more family members, including children, are not released but instead transferred into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to continue the removal process. Individuals are often detained incommunicado and without their families being able to locate them.92 G. Exploitation and human trafficking 52. Cases of disappearances at the hands of non-State actors have also been reported in the context of labour migration and forced labour. For example, migrants from the Asia-Pacific region have been coerced into human trafficking networks after falling victim to online scams. In these contexts, migrants have been subjected to abductions or held in incommunicado detention and forced to work in scam operations. 93 53. A high number of disappearances are attributed to smuggling and trafficking networks operating along the main migratory routes and profiting from the particular vulnerability of migrants stemming from the dependency of migrants on their services due to the lack of safe and regular migratory pathways.94 Migrant women and children are reportedly removed from shelters where they were housed after lodging asylum applications and forced into prostitution by human trafficking networks.95 These dynamics subject women and children disproportionally to disappearance and enforced disappearance when conducted with State support or acquiescence. H. Impunity 54. Impunity, including the systemic denial of accountability and transparency by national investigative and judicial authorities, represents a key factor that perpetuates cycles of disappearances, including enforced disappearance. For instance, in Mexico, 17 municipal police officers were involved in the enforced disappearances of 196 migrants whose remains were found in 48 graves. To date, no police officer has been convicted of these crimes. 96 Quasi-generalized regimes of impunity, collusion in human rights violations by State and non-State actors and corruption deter migrants from reporting disappearances, including enforced disappearance, owing to mistrust in State institutions and in their ability to conduct effective searches, provide redress and protect victims of disappearance from retaliation. 97 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 12 CED/C/GRC/CO/1, para. 30. Submission by OHCHR Mexico; and submission by World Organization against Torture. Submission by the World Organization against Torture. Submission by Al Otro Lado. See https://bangkok.ohchr.org/news/2022/online-scam-operations-and-trafficking-forced-criminalitysoutheast-asia. A/72/335, paras. 42–43; see submissions by Ecuador, Guatemala, and Morocco. See communication PAN 1/2023 and Government reply of 22 December 2023. See communication MEX 5/2021 and Government reply of 15 November 2021. A/HRC/36/39/Add.2, para. 77.