An organization of New York lawyers reveals a new massacre of migrants in Sonora

Jonzi was four years old when an armed commando attacked the migrant convoy in which he was traveling in Sonora.

The child, who had arrived in Mexico from Ecuador, died on the night of February 15, along with at least two other women.

His death had gone unnoticed.

He had been added to the large number of missing, kidnapped and deceased migrants crossing the country to the United States border, about which no one asks, no one claims.

Until the lawyer organization 1800 Migrante released a statement from New York: two witnesses recounted the horror of a new massacre of migrants in Mexican territory.

Now, in Sáric, about 80 kilometers from the border with Arizona.

The news has forced the Sonora Prosecutor's Office to give some explanations.

At the moment, prosecutor Gustavo Salas recognizes the death of Yonzi and the two women, and three others injured due to the attack by a commando.

The rest is still being investigated.

The group had left in three vehicles from La Reforma, a small town in Sonora less than 100 kilometers from the crossing to the United States. According to the Prosecutor's Office there were a maximum of 14 people, according to the witnesses who spoke with 1800 Migrante there were at least 50 people, who They had filled three vans.

In one of them, according to one of the organization's witnesses, at least 25 men were traveling.

In the other two cars were women and children.

10 minutes had passed and at the height of Cerro Prieto, already close to Sáric, it was night and the terror began.

“First we felt that a car hit us from behind and the impact knocked us off the road.

He threw us into a small ravine, after that, they turned on some lights and some men got out and the shooting started, they were machine gun bursts, they shot at us and we all ran to save ourselves," Carlos, from Peru, told the organization. lawyers.

The man was able to escape the attack because he ran through the desert with a group of five other Ecuadorians.

He arrived at 1800 Migrante asking for help: he did not know anything about his sister, Ana Vidal, who was traveling with him that night.

Vidal, 28, is one of the two women killed in the attack.

Her body has been recognized by video call by her family in Peru, the organization has stated.

The second is Wendy Carranza, a Honduran, who was traveling with her 15-month-old baby.

Her brother Welvin told Univision that the woman was going to Texas to meet her husband and her other son who already lived there.

She called him from her cell phone after her attack: “She was alive for a long time with the shot, with the baby there next to her.

“She felt the shot in her back.”

Now her brother is asking for help to repatriate the woman's body to Honduras and to recover the baby who is uninjured in a shelter in Sonora.

The hitmen set fire to two of the vehicles in which the migrants were traveling with grenade launchers.

William Murillo, president of 1800 Migrante, has indicated that the command used large-caliber weapons to attack the migrants.

The Sonora Prosecutor's Office has pointed out that there are three of the travelers still injured in hospitals in Caborca.

Prosecutor Gustavo Salas affirms that the attack was carried out by an armed group, which the authorities have already located.

“In the last few hours, the Mexican Army has made important arrests in that area: they detained a complete cell of eight individuals with long weapons,” said Salas, “and in a second event, three others who were also made available.” of federal authority.”

The prosecutor points out that this is a federal investigation into human trafficking and that those who attacked the migrants are “groups that generate violence in the area.”

The explanation has not completely convinced the organization of lawyers, who accuse the Prosecutor's Office of "complicit silence", since they had not given any information about the attack until they revealed the attack: "We feel a little perplexed that an office like ours, which is thousands of kilometers away, has more information than them.

"We are convinced that there are more than three deaths and they do not want to say it."

Murillo points out that some of the Ecuadorian witnesses with whom they have spoken saw charred bodies: “We don't know who they are, but we do know that we have requests for help from different people, from Ecuador and other countries, who are looking for their relatives. and unfortunately we cannot coordinate the actions of the Prosecutor's Office because there is a blockage of information, and they will know why they do it that way.”

The story is not new.

Mexico has a dark history of massacring migrants.

On August 24, 2010, Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla, 18, an Ecuadorian immigrant, arrived at the Tamaulipas police to report that his group had been kidnapped by Los Zetas.

On a ranch in San Fernando, authorities found the massacred bodies of 72 people.

In that same municipality, clandestine graves with almost 200 bodies, most of them foreigners, were found in the following years.

In 2021, 12 Tamaulipas police officers shot and set fire to 19 migrants in Camargo, near the border with the United States.

Last year, a judge sentenced them to 50 years in prison.

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