Mass Effect 3: where the hell is all my crew?

It's Mass Effect 3, you had your rank and ship stripped from you for destroying the Mass Relay during the Arrival DLC in ME2. You don't have your crew because they weren't gonna wait around while you did nothing. You'll meet them all later. There's a time period of a few months from ME2 and 3. Overall I think the entire series plays over 2 1/2 years, since Liara was 107 in ME1 and is 109 in ME3 (or 2 whichever one she tells her age again)

Not to mention, your entire crew worked for Cerberus and so did you, and Cerberus is bad. So the Alliance wanted to make sure you had no connections to Cerberus at all, hence why Shepard was kept "out of the loop".

The surviving members went their separate ways, the same as the difference between ME1 and ME2. Tali returned to the fleet, unless she was exiled, Garrus returns to Palaven to try and convince the government that the Reapers are real, Legion returns to the Geth, Mordin goes onto a new project involving the Genophage, Grunt returns to Tuchanka to lead Aralak Company, Jack becomes a teacher for biotic kids (and gets a REALLY big swear jar), Zaeed takes on more jobs as a merc, Kasumi keeps stealing stuff, Samara continues her life as a Justicar, Jacob goes onto help a group of ex-Cerberus scientists, Thane's Kepral's Syndrome gets worse and he moves into a hospital on the Citadel but is a peace with it. Miranda has disappeared.

Each surviving squadmate from ME1 and ME2 has a cameo, some with larger roles then others but many have the potential to die, unless you completed their loyalty missions and make the right choices in ME3 (you DID complete all the loyalty missions right?).

ME2 was the largest squadmate base by far but ME3 brings some back. As fulltime squadmates you can have; Liara, Garrus, Tali, Ashley/Kaiden, 2 squadmates new to ME3 and a new squadmate that requires a DLC. 2 of the DLCs include temporary squadmates, Omega brings Aria and a new one, Citadel brings you the opportunity to once more pair up with Wrex if he is alive.

Furthermore Citadel allows you to play the Armax Arsenal Arena with many squadmates, in fact the only previous squadmates you cannot play with are; the one(s) who died on Virmire, any who were lost in the Suicide Mission, Mordin, Thane, Legion and any who die in ME3.

Citadel also allows you to bring any and all (with a possible exception) surviving members of your previous squads and a couple new Normandy crew members together for a party of your choice. You can also meet them on the Silversun strip and it's accompanying arcades, bars, casinos and other amusements. Citadel was designed to be a last, somewhat cheesy and quite funny, goodbye to Shepard and the squad, I always play it before the final mission in the series.

you gotta recruit them all over again . not all of them can be tho