Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/MEXICO CITY: The authorities in Mexico have found 343 refugees and migrants, including 103 unaccompanied minors, in an abandoned freight truck container on the side of the highway.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) said that the trailer was found in the steamy Gulf coast state of Veracruz. It was on the route often used by smugglers to bring citizens of different countries from southeastern Mexico to the United States border.
Authorities said that the people were in good health, and it was unclear why the driver fled.
Most of the migrant children were from Guatemala
Most of the children were from Guatemala. Migrants who make it to the United States (US) frequently pay smugglers to bring their children afterward. The institute said that the adults were mainly from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Ecuador.
The children would be given into the custody of Veracruz’s Family Services System while the others will be processed to determine their legal status in Mexico, said the National Immigration Institute.
People have been found dead inside abandoned freight containers in different countries in the past. The institute said the adults were mainly from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Ecuador.
The trailer had ventilation ports cut in the roof and fans, and the people wore colour-coded bracelets, apparently to identify them as smugglers’ clients. The trucks are one of the most dangerous methods the people smugglers use to transport undocumented migrants through Mexico to the United States.
In June 2022, more than 50 people had died after they were abandoned in a scorching hot tractor-trailer truck in San Antonio, Texas. In December 2021, 56 United States-bound migrants from Central America were killed while dozens injured when the truck they were travelling in overturned in southern region of Mexico.
Mexican authorities found 103 unaccompanied minors in a trailer in Veracruz state along with 212 adults from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador. Another 28 migrants traveling as families from Guatemala and El Salvador were also in the trailer https://t.co/LDzuS7zD3l pic.twitter.com/4gQHtAPEVd
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 7, 2023
