8 Chinese migrants dead in Mexico
Eight Chinese migrants were found dead on the coast of southern Mexico, reportedly after their boat capsized along a popular but perilous route for illegally entering the United States, CNN reported citing authorities on Monday.
The bodies of the seven women and one man were discovered on Friday on a beach in San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca, the state’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Treacherous boat rides up the coast of Mexico are often used by migrants hoping to cross into the US in an attempt to bypass checkpoints on closely monitored land routes, CNN reported.
The Oaxaca prosecutor’s office said the migrants had travelled on a boat operated by a Mexican man, which set off on Thursday from Tapachula, Chiapas State, near the Guatemala border. One Chinese man survived the trip, the statement said. It did not explain what happened to the boat’s operator.
The prosecutor’s office said it was working with federal agencies to investigate the incident and the Chinese embassy in
Treacherous boat rides up the coast of Mexico are often used by migrants hoping to cross into the US in an attempt to bypass checkpoints on closely monitored land routes
Mexico to identify the bodies.
According to the CNN report, the number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the US from Mexico has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2023, more than 37,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, US government data shows, compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade.
And though still dwarfed in number by migrants from regional neighbours like Mexico,
Venezuela and Guatemala, Chinese people are on track to be the fastest-growing group making those crossings.
A Chinese migrant who arrived in the US via the ocean route in late 2022 previously told CNN that her boat almost capsized at sea after departing from Tapachula under the cover of darkness. “I took a boat at night, went through big waves, and then it was very bumpy, I was almost thrown out of the boat,” she said in an interview last year.