As of: 04/14/2023 4:01 p.m
More than 200 migrants have been rescued from an abandoned truck in southern Mexico, including several unaccompanied minors. According to the authorities, the people are from Guatemala. Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador.
Mexican authorities have freed 209 migrants from an abandoned truck. 161 adults and 48 minors, 25 of them without families, were found cooped up in the truck, the state migration authority INM said on Thursday night (local time). The vehicle was parked on a country road near the southern Mexican town of Nuevo Teapa in the state of Veracruz.
A look inside the truck in which more than 200 migrants were previously found cooped up.
Image: dpa
calls for help from the truck
According to INM, they were extricated from the vehicle after calls for help were heard. A migrant was taken to a hospital with symptoms of suffocation, the statement said. The people come from the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as well as from South American Ecuador.
Only at the beginning of March more than 300 migrants were freed from trucks
It was not until early March that the liberation of more than 340 migrants from a truck trailer also made headlines in Veracruz. More than 100 of them were unaccompanied children.
Millions of migrants from Central and South America try to reach the USA via Mexico every year. They are fleeing violence and poverty. Again and again they are transported by smugglers in overcrowded trucks.
Since 2018, there has been a massive increase in the number of people waiting at the Mexican border to enter the United States. According to US authorities, more than 2.5 million people were arrested in 2022 trying to enter the country illegally.