A mother’s anguish: Santa Rosa family desperate to find their missing ‘Dreamer’

For nearly two weeks, Bryant Palacios Zuñiga’s mother has unsuccessfully sought answers from law enforcement in Redwood City, where Palacios lives and was last seen.|

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Sitting in the living room of her family’s west Santa Rosa home, Naxheli Zuñiga clasped baby blue rosary beads as she discussed the disappearance of her oldest son, Bryant Palacios Zuñiga.

On the walls next to her are numerous academic achievement awards the Santa Rosa High School and UC Davis graduate has earned since middle school.

Zuñiga on Tuesday struggled to maintain her composure as she recounted the last time she spoke to Palacios, 26.

On April 2, “He answered my call and said he was working but was taking some time off,” Zuñiga said in Spanish. “I asked how are things going and he said, ‘Everything is good, I’m working.’”

The end of that call marked the beginning of an agonizing odyssey for Zuñiga.

For nearly two weeks, she has unsuccessfully sought answers from law enforcement in Redwood City, where Palacios lives, and Nogales, Arizona, where his car was found April 7 parked along the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Zuñiga’s extended family is originally from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, but she said Palacios has no family near the border nor any reason to park his car along a remote road next to the border fence.

She and her family hold out hope they’ll hear from him, and she said she wished law enforcement in Redwood City and Nogales, including officials with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, would be more aggressive in their search.

She and her daughter Cristina Palacios, 20, have tried to figure out what happened to Palacios, who they described as a bright, athletic young man with a healthy lifestyle.

A ‘Dream’

Palacios came to the U.S. with his parents when he was 8 years old. Zuñiga said he quickly learned English and excelled in school.

He was a beneficiary of the California Dream Act, which allows students who entered the U.S. illegally as children to obtain legal protections through a process called DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

As a DACA student, Palacios was able to enroll at UC Davis, where he studied biochemistry and molecular biology. After he graduated in 2020, he moved back with his family in Santa Rosa and started looking for work.

Zuñiga said the same year he graduated from college he landed a job in Menlo Park, with a company called Avellino Labs, a biotechnology company that specializes in gene therapy and molecular diagnostics, and later found an apartment in Redwood City.

She said her son had no history of depression or other mental health issues. She described him as quiet but that he showed no recent signs of being troubled.

Rafael Vázquez Guzmán, who heads local nonprofit Lideres del Futuro Avanzando, which provides support to migrant refugees from Latin America, said he helped Palacios with academic scholarships and his DACA paperwork when he attended Santa Rosa High School. He said Palacios was shy and focused on his school work rather than parties.

“They enjoy being in the library, they don’t socialize like a lot of other students,” he said of young people who end up in rigorous academic programs at UCLA or UC Davis.