According to Human Rights Watch: "On December 29, 2009, at approximately 8 p.m., according to witnesses, soldiers detained Nitza Paola Alvarado Espinoza, 31, and José Ángel Alvarado Herrera, 30, as they were driving in Buenaventura, Chihuahua. Around 10 p.m., soldiers forcibly entered the home of Nitza Paola and José Ángel’s cousins and arbitrarily detained Irene Rocío Alvarado Reyes, 18, according to Irene Rocío’s mother. On December 30, Nitza’s sister went to the state judicial police in Casas Grandes to inquire about her missing relatives. Upon arriving, she noticed José Ángel’s car parked in a lot attached to the station. When she asked the judicial police officer attending her why the vehicle was there, he said the report accompanying the vehicle indicated that it had been left there by the Army. The same report, the officer told her, said that the Army had detained Nitza Paola and José Ángel, who had been in the car at the time. (A subsequent letter from the judicial police agent assigned to the investigation confirmed that the victims’ car was on the premises of the police station shortly after the disappearance.) Nitza’s sister asked the officer if he was certain the Army had carried out the detentions, to which he replied he was “pretty sure, because I have a section that lists the names of your relatives.” From the judicial police station, Nitza’s sister went directly to the state prosecutor’s office in Casas Grandes to file a report. However, when she met with a state prosecutor, he refused to register the case, telling her instead that she had to go to the state prosecutor’s office in the neighboring municipality of Buenaventura. When she arrived there, she was told that there was no prosecutor who could attend to her. José Ángel’s brother encountered similar resistance convincing authorities to open an investigation into the disappearance. Like Nitza’s sister, he also went to the state prosecutor’s office to file a complaint on November 30, where a judicial police agent told him that the three civilians were being held on the 35th infantry battalion in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. However, according to José Ángel, the agent told him the family should wait several days before taking any action. “Be patient,” the officer said, “we know that the Army detained them.” More than two years later, the fate of the three victims remains unknown. A subsequent investigation by the National Human Rights Commission concluded that they had been “disappeared” by the military." ^[+]