The city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas, Mexico.
Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico

Mexican Authorites Find 513 Undocumented Migrants Hidden In Trucks

May 18, 2011 By Staff

The city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas, Mexico.

Today in Latin America

Top StoryMexican authorities Tuesday found 513 undocumented migrants inside two tractor trailers in the southern state of Chiapas.

Chiapas state police found the largest group of migrants in recent years by using X-ray equipment on the trucks at a checkpoint in the outskirts of city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Police arrested four people accused of smuggling the undocumented migrants as they attempted to flee the scene.

“It is the largest rescue of migrants traveling in inhuman conditions,” said a spokesman from the attorney general’s office to AFP.

The migrants, who were allegedly being smuggled to the United States, included women and children. 410 of the migrants were from Guatemala, 47 from El Salvador, 32 from Ecuador, 12 from India, six from Nepal, three from China and one each from Japan.

It is believed that the migrants paid $7,000 per person to the alleged traffickers to take them into the US.

According to official figures some 300,000 undocumented migrants, mostly from Central America, cross Mexico’s 620 mile border with Guatemala and Belize every year. At least 11,300 migrants were kidnapped in Mexico from April to September 2010, according to the most recent report from the country’s independent National Human Rights Commission (CNDH, in Spanish).

In January, Chiapas state authorities found 219 migrants hidden in a trailer truck.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

Caribbean

Central America

  • Guatemalan soldiers searched Tuesday for the culprits of a massacre in a remote province after the country’s president declared a state of siege there, a sign that Guatemala is escalating its own war against drug traffickers as violence spills over from Mexico.
  • An 8-year-old Salvadoran girl who reported she was raped by immigrant smugglers in Mexico has been reunited with family in the United States after a tense struggle with authorities who were trying to deport her, an attorney for her grandmother said.
  • A Nicaraguan court has again postponed a hearing for American Jason Puracal, who is accused of laundering money for organized crime.

Andes

Southern Cone

Image: eduardo.robles @ Flickr.

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2 Comments

[…] Mexico — Every year an estimated 300,000 migrants — mostly from Central America — cross Mexico’s southern border on their way to the […]

[…] discovery comes on the heels of a similar incident in May when Mexican officials found 513 migrants inside a two tractor trailers in Chiapas. Using X-ray equipment, Chiapas state authorities discovered the migrants who hailed from Central […]

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