121 migrants found in abandoned truck in northern Mexico
Monterrey, Mexico, Sep 14 (EFE).- More than 120 migrants were found Wednesday in an overcrowded and abandoned tractor-trailer unit in Mexico’s Nuevo León state bordering Texas, the National Guard (NG) said.
A citizen’s complaint about a badly parked vehicle on the Matehuala-Saltillo highway prompted the discovery of the migrants.
“National Guards went to the place and had contact with the vehicle, dry box type, parked on the shoulder of the road,” the NG said in a statement. “Upon approaching, they realized that the operator was not there and they heard screams coming from inside the vehicle.”
The security body added that, upon opening the truck, they found people, including minors, who identified as migrants and could not prove their legal stay in the country.
The migrants, originally from Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cuba, were provided with water and medical attention and transferred to a migration station for procedures in order to receive consular assistance and, “where appropriate, proceed with their assisted return.”
The finding is reminiscent of the June tragedy in San Antonio, Texas, in which more than 50 migrants died after being abandoned in the heat without water in a similar vehicle.
The region is experiencing a record migration flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection has intercepted more than 1.82 million people so far in fiscal year 2022, which began last October.
In addition, Mexico received a record of more than 58,000 refugee applications in the first half of 2022, an annual increase of almost 15 percent, according to the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance. EFE
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