Mexico authorities find 123 people trapped in locked trailer
Authorities have found 123 people from Central and South America trapped in a trailer in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosí, the country’s immigration agency said on Thursday.
Officials from the state attorney general’s office found the people in Matehuala, a city on the border of Nuevo Leon, on Wednesday after a local reported hearing cries for help from a locked trailer box.
The majority rescued were from the Central American nations of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, as well as four from Ecuador and one from Cuba, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.
Among them were 34 children. The immigration agency did not say how they came to be stuck there nor where they were heading, but such groups of migrants typically hope to reach the United States.
The same day police in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, arrested three alleged human smugglers after finding 11 Guatemalan people trapped in a house, according to the Chihuahua state security department.
Chihuahua’s attorney general has opened an investigation into the suspects, two of whom are 16 years old.
Kidnapping and extortion are familiar dangers for migrants travelling north through Mexico, many of whom rely on payments to local gangs for safe passage.
On Wednesday, a group of people walking from Guatemala blocked a highway near the southern town of
Huixtla in Chiapas, saying they feared they would come under attack by criminals if they kept walking. They continued blocking the highway on Thursday, hoping to pressure Mexican authorities to give them temporary documents allowing them to travel to the US border.
Both the US and Mexico’s southern borders have faced ever larger numbers of migrants travelling north this year. More than 400,000 people have crossed the Darién Gap from Colombia into Panama in 2023, according to Panamanian government data, up from 250,000 in 2022.