Texas Family Still Looking For Missing Transgender Woman Who Vanished In 2017

The day before Kimberly Avila went missing, her family was hosting a party in their Brownsville, Texas home. Relatives from across the border in Mexico were visiting, and the family enjoyed a late dinner and a game of Lotería. As the party wound down in the early morning hours of May 13, 2017, Kimberly got dressed and put on her makeup to head downtown to the clubs and bars.

The 32-year-old asked her sister, Ivon Rodarte, to drop her off around 2:30 in the morning. Ivon was hesitant — it was late, and she had a nagging feeling that it was a bad idea to go out so late. Kimberly, however, was persuasive, and Ivon relented, though she tried several times to convince Kimberly to come on back home.

Ivon hasn’t seen her sister since.

The next morning, Ivon and Kimberly’s mother was frantic when she realized that Kimberly wasn’t home. The family waited all day for Kimberly to come back before heading downtown to look for her. While searching, they ran into a patrolling police officer and let him know what was happening. While he took their information, he told them they would have to wait until Monday to speak with a detective.

By Monday, the family was even more frantic as they spoke with a detective and news reporters and began plastering the downtown area with fliers. The area — Washington and 12th streets — where Kimberly went missing was in a rough area of Brownsville. There were many abandoned buildings, and the street lighting was practically nonexistent. It was also close to the border crossing into nearby Matamoras, Mexico.

Ivon went so far as to dig through trash cans near where she had dropped Kimberly off, hoping that she would find something of Kimberly’s or there would be some clue about what happened to her. It seemed as if she had simply vanished from the face of the earth.

Detectives had a hard time investigating the case, according to community activist Oscar Lopez. Lopez noted that the police had a poor reputation with the LGBTQ population in Brownsville and had recently arrested several sex workers, meaning the people who were downtown the night Kimberly went missing weren’t willing to talk to authorities lest they be arrested too.

Kimberly remained missing with no further information until December 2018, when a journalist who reports on issues along the border between the U.S. and Mexico wrote a blog post about sources who told him that Kimberly had been seen at a bar arguing with a man before being shoved into a vehicle and leaving in the direction of the border. The family was hopeful when the blogger shared his information with the police, but there was still no movement on Kimberly’s case.

In June 2019, the police held a press conference at the Avila home, saying that they had received a call with information and asked for more people to come forward. They would not, however, reveal the nature of the phone call or the information they reportedly gleaned from it.

There have been no further developments in the three years since, and several community members say the lack of action on Kimberly’s case is typical in the LGBTQ community. Hear their perspectives on Disappeared on ID on Oct. 19 at 10/9c.

If you have any information about Kimberly Avila, please call the Brownsville, Texas, Police Department at 956-548-7000.