A total of 343 migrants, including 103 unaccompanied minors, were rescued on Sunday night from a trailer in Veracruz, Mexico, which was abandoned on the side of the road, local authorities reported Monday, in one of the largest recent discoveries of migrant children traveling alone through Mexico.
The truck was on the Cosamaloapan-La Tinaja highway, Veracruz, without its driver, and its box was fitted with a double-deck of metal structures, as well as fans anchored in the lower part and vents on the roof.
Image of the moment in which the migrants are lowered from the truck bed, shared by the Mexican authorities.
National Institute of Migrations Mexico
The National Institute of Migration (INM) of Mexico indicated that they found 103 unaccompanied minors coming
mostly from Guatemala
.
There were also 212 adults from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador, as well as 28 more migrants, from different families from Guatemala and El Salvador.
This is what the inside of the trailer looked like.
National Institute of Migrations of Mexico
The migrants, he details, wore colored bracelets as a means of identification.
A photo distributed by the INM showed plastic bottles and other trash strewn across the floor of a long, narrow compartment.
Both unaccompanied minors and those who make up the family nuclei will be under the guardianship of the state's System for the Integral Development of the Family (SDIF), it is indicated, and adults will initiate the administrative procedure to define their legal situation in National territory.
Earlier this year, Mexican authorities found 57 unaccompanied minors from Guatemala at a checkpoint near the US-Mexico border, and another 20 unaccompanied minors in a group of mostly Central American people in the state. southern Chiapas.
Trailers are a dangerous means of transportation to which migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico to the United States are subjected.
Conditions in these units can be deadly in extreme temperatures and when people are cooped up for long periods of time.
The images of the rescue of 57 migrant children who were traveling locked in a trailer
Jan 27, 202301:06
On June 27, 2022, 85 migrants were discovered traveling overcrowded inside the box of a trailer in Texas, 53 of whom had already died due to being overcrowded and without sufficient ventilation.
The find was called the deadliest human smuggling tragedy in US history.
The Mexican authorities have initiated a trial against six alleged human traffickers in this case.
