The search for answers is underway after a Maryland man visiting Mexico for a destination wedding was mysteriously found dead at a popular resort in Cancun. 

A week after the death, the family of Chez Johnson, 31, said his body still has not been sent to the United States. 

Yulanda Williams, Johnson’s mother, told WJZ on Wednesday the last time she spoke with her son was before he left on Jan. 15 for a co-worker’s destination wedding. 

The next day, she said she received a call from a family friend stating that he had been found dead. 

“I got a call around 12-1 o’clock that Chez had died, that he had fallen off a balcony in Mexico,” Yulanda Williams said.

Williams describes her son as a “character” who loved fashion, traveling, and his family. He was looking to further his education after graduating from Baltimore City Community College (BCCC) two years ago.

“He was my partner in crime,” Williams said. “He went to every function I ever wanted to go to. He was pescatarian. We always seemed to be eating seafood.”

Now, Williams is demanding for the official police and autopsy report from Mexican authorities and wants answers as to how her son died less than a month after his 31st birthday. 

“They just would not talk to me”

Williams shared Johnson’s last known location with WJZ. He was at the all-inclusive Riu Caribe hotel in Cancun, Mexico, for his co-worker’s wedding.

The only way Willaims got any information regarding her son’s death was by FaceTiming a family friend who was also on the trip.

“The young lady Tierra, who is my uncle’s daughter, had confirmed it,” Williams said. “So I needed her to call me, so she FaceTimed me, and I wanted to see Chez’s body. But they wouldn’t let me see. So, she had to confirm that it was him.”

Williams said, “Tierra was telling them, ‘This is his mom. You know, this is his mom. Y’all have to talk to her,’ and they just would not talk to me.”

“He is a gay male so it’s no telling how they treat people over there,” said Shantia Smith, Johnson’s sister-in-law. 

“Who was the last person to see him?”

Nearly a week after the incident, Williams says no local law enforcement agency in Mexico has yet to reach out to her directly about the circumstances surrounding her son’s death. She only knows what friends on the trip have been told. 

The only video and pictures she had received are of the now empty stairwell and balcony the alleged incident happened. 

“They said he had no defensive wounds on him, his body was the impact on his body from the fall,” Williams said. “He told me it wasn’t from him falling down the steps. It was from him falling from a height. They first told me that his leg was broken. Then they told the young lady, Tierra, told me that his ankle was broken. So, like, what is it? So that’s why I was like, ‘I need to get the police report, because it’s conflicting stories.’”

Williams said, “She said they were like big boulders about ‘this big,’ like eight of them when they showed her. And she said when she went back, everything was gone and everything was cleaned up.” 

Williams continued, “Cameras didn’t point into the stairwell. They pointed outside. When she asked about the camera,  I asked ‘Well, do they have audio? No audio.’”

“We called the police station, we were on hold, they hung up,” Smith said. “We called again and said they do not speak English and they hung up. The hotel has not answered the phone.” 

Smith and Williams also expressed difficulty working with a funeral director in Cancun. 

“They changed the price twice, because at first it was like 174,000 pesos,” Smith said. “Then we had our funeral home here contact them. She said that she would discount it to like $7,000. But then, when she found out that we had an insurance policy that can cover some of the expenses, she took the price back up.”

Smith added, “Y’all dangling him in front of us, like, ‘hey, look, you can have this property when you pay the money, we’ll send the property.’ It’s the same thing.”

“I am in mommy mode trying to get things done, I am on the phone all day, trying to, you know, try to maneuver some things,” Williams said. “So, it’s heartbreaking. And my family is really suffering because Chez was loved by my family and so many people.” 

WJZ reached out to the U.S. Consulate General Merida and received an automated voicemail and email. 

Riu Resorts has yet to respond to our inquiries.

“Maybe somebody can investigate this place, I know it is all inclusive but you have, it has to, it has to be a limit,” Williams said. “He was my youngest, my youngest son. I just needed confirmation. I don’t want them there, I really want him home. So that I can put him in his resting place. That’s what I want.” 

Johnson’s sister-in-law said as of Thursday morning, the family has set up an online fundraiser and they are working with the Mexican embassy on a potential investigation. But still a lot of questions remain, including how they’re going to get his body home. 

Other recent reports of deaths in Cancun

In 2024, a 12-year-old boy was killed after gunmen on jet skis opened fire at a beach in Cancun, authorities said, marking another incident of deadly violence at a Mexican resort in recent years.

Mexican prosecutors said in a statement, that the gunmen were targeting a rival drug dealer on the beach and fled after the barrage of bullets. 

The boy, a local resident, was apparently lying on a lounge chair on the beach with his family when he was hit by stray bullets. The boy was taken to a local hospital where he later died, according to authorities. 

In February 2024, three people were shot dead by gunmen – one who arrived and fled aboard a boat – in Acapulco.

In 2022, two Canadians were killed in Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun, apparently because of debts between international drug and weapons trafficking gangs.

In 2021, further south in Tulum, two tourists — one a California travel blogger born in India and a German national — were killed when they apparently were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between rival drug dea.

The U.S. State Department has issued a Level 2 travel alert in Quintana Roo, the state where Cancun is located. The alert warns travelers to “exercise increased caution” in Mexico due to terrorism, crime, and kidnapping.

Online, the advisory summary notifies tourists of the violent crimes that can take place, and can include homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery.

Armed, masked federal agents smashing car windows, ripping people from their vehicles. Protesters pepper-sprayed. A Minneapolis woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

And closer to home, agents shot a man during a confrontation in Glen Burnie and injured another, then later changed their story about what happened.

Images that have angered people across the country and the state have alarmed Maryland lawmakers. They’re drafting bills to protect residents from an increasingly violent mass deportation effort and send a strong message to Washington.

But critics say lawmakers’ focus on immigration could affect public safety and draw the attention of President Donald Trump’s administration, risking an ICE surge into Maryland.

Maryland lawmakers are following the lead of other states, seeking to ban agreements that let ICE work with local law enforcement and to stop federal immigration officers from concealing their faces.

“We’re moving forward because what we’ve seen has been unconscionable,” said Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat representing Baltimore. Lawmakers will hear the mask and 287(g) ban bills Thursday.

But they’ll also consider a bill that would collect data on federal agents’ interactions with the public in order to digitally unmask them. There’s a pitch to cement the right to sue the federal government and bar immigration officers from state law enforcement jobs.

The Trump administration is challenging a California mask ban in court and it’s not clear how much states can limit federal agents.

The plans come as violent and deadly clashes between federal agents and the public have reached a boiling point, and just as the curtains have opened on the state’s 90-day lawmaking session.

Ferguson and his counterpart in the House, Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, have declared their top priorities are banning contracts between federal immigration enforcement and local agencies, known as 287(g) agreements for a section of federal law, and prohibiting federal agents from wearing masks.

Unmasking agents will strengthen trust between law enforcement and residents, Ferguson said.

“Immigrants deserve to live with dignity and respect,” said Peña-Melnyk, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who has blasted agents’ treatment of the public. The Democrat represents parts of Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties.

Gov. Wes Moore declined to weigh in on bills lawmakers have yet to debate, but the Democrat questioned why the federal officers need to “dress up” to do their jobs, and said he’s concerned about the behavior he’s seeing from ICE.

“They [ICE] don’t seem to care about violent crime and public safety,” Moore said. “Nor do they care about following the Constitution.”

Trump administration officials have continued to back agents’ tactics, and insist that allowing agents to pick up noncitizens who are being held in local jails keeps ICE from having to flood communities with patrols.

Democratic lawmakers say their proposals wouldn’t risk public safety or interfere with federal immigration enforcement.

“We will always participate to solve crime and to get dangerous people off the streets,” said Sen. Will Smith, a Montgomery County Democrat and the Senate’s lead sponsor of the bill to ban the agreements. The measure is expected to breeze through the General Assembly. Del. Nicole Williams of Prince George’s County is the lead House sponsor.

Judiciary Chair J. Sandy Bartlett, an attorney, argued that state and local jurisdictions fund local public safety officers to protect the people within their purview. The federal government has its own budget for immigration enforcement. Her House committee will review the bill.

“They do not need our law enforcement to do their job,” the Anne Arundel County Democrat said.

Existing 287(g) agreements allow corrections officers at local jails to ask the immigration status of someone they’ve arrested. Officers can then flag ICE and hold noncitizens for the feds for up to 48 hours after arrest.

Critics of the agreements say they allow law enforcement to racially profile Marylanders arrested for unrelated crimes and sow fear of law enforcement. They also may extend someone’s detention after they would have otherwise been released before a court date.

Republican lawmakers and county sheriffs cautioned that ending the agreements could stoke retaliation.

Federal agencies could see the bans as “resistance,” said Sen. Bill Folden, a retired police officer who at one time served as a deputy sheriff in Frederick County, a jurisdiction that’s had a 287(g) agreement in place for nearly two decades.

“We need to be careful what we ask for,” he said. “Because we don’t want to see the model that we’re seeing in Minnesota.”

The ICE surge in Minneapolis has become a proving ground for how far the Trump administration will take its deportation efforts. A federal judge on Jan. 16 ordered ICE to refrain from detaining protesters or using pepper spray on people exercising their First Amendment rights.

Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler called the agreements “an important public safety program,” that allow his officers to screen for someone’s immigration status inside jails. No contract in Maryland permits local officers to conduct immigration arrests.

Sheriffs in Allegany, Carroll, Cecil, Frederick, Garrett, St. Mary’s and Washington counties have also signed the voluntary agreements, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Many say they want the programs to continue.

Unmasking ICE

The ban on face coverings would extend to state, local and federal officers, with some exceptions, such as wearing surgical masks to prevent illness.

The digital unmasking bill, drafted by Del. David Moon, would allow the state to store data, such as location, license plate photos and cellphone video of an ICE officer’s actions, should a member of the public file a complaint against them.

At a time when there’s selective oversight for federal agencies, the Montgomery County Democrat said it’s imperative the state use “the resources at our disposal to ensure there’s at least the opportunity for accountability.”

Republican Del. Matt Morgan said lawmakers should first try to understand why the feds are wearing masks.

“They’re trying to protect those officers,” the St. Mary’s Republican said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said her officers face violence, threats and harassment while trying to do their jobs. Concealing their faces protects their identities, she said.

Suing ICE

Another early proposal will cement Marylanders’ ability to sue the federal government over civil rights violations. Democrat Del. Lorig Charkoudian of Montgomery County said her bill, dubbed the No Kings Act, will provide legal recourse where none currently exists.

Del. Adrian Boafo has pitched a bill that would disqualify immigration officers sworn in after Trump’s 2025 inauguration from getting jobs as state law enforcement officers.

The bill raises questions about whether someone’s past experience could bar them from future employment, said Nancy Modesitt, a University of Baltimore law professor who specializes in employment law.

But it’s emblematic of Democrats’ outrage after watching Trump’s immigration forces take the streets of American cities.

Boafo, a Prince George’s County Democrat, said those who applied to ICE after the agency used amped-up anti-immigration rhetoric to recruit applicants understood what they were signing up for.

Should the bill pass, he said, it will serve as “a reminder that we’re not going to forget what terror this has been for a lot of Marylanders.”