Tuesday, May 17, 2011
© Copyright 2013
Albany Herald
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AP) - Police in Mexico's southern Chiapas state found 513 migrants on Tuesday inside two trailer trucks bound for the United States, and said they had been transported in dangerously crowded conditions.
Some of the immigrants were suffering from dehydration after traveling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright as the trucks bounced along from the Guatemalan border, and allow more migrants to be more crammed in on the floor.
The trucks had air holes punched in the tops of the containers, but migrants interviewed at the state prosecutors' office said they lacked air and water. The trucks were bound for the central city of Puebla, where the migrants said they had been told they would be loaded aboard a second set of vehicles for the trip to the U.S. border.
None of the migrants would say whether any drug gang had been involved in the mass smuggling scheme broken up early Tuesday when Chiapas state police discovered the migrants while using X-ray equipment on the trucks at a checkpoint in the outskirts of city of Tuxtla Gutierrez.
The migrants said the smugglers were charging them about $7,000 apiece to get them into the United States.
The immigration institute said in a statement that 410 of the migrants were from Guatemala, 47 from El Salvador, 32 from Ecuador, 12 from India, six from Nepal, three from China and one each from Japan, the Dominican Republic and Honduras. There were 32 women and four children among them.
More like this story
- Judge to hear Arizona immigrant driver's license ban suit ( March 22, 2013 )
- Fixing Mexico also fixes immigration ( February 20, 2013 )
- Bipartisan U.S. Senate group proposes immigration plan ( January 28, 2013 )
- 32 illlegal immigrants arrested in ICE operation ( September 28, 2010 )
- Senators unveil 'path to citizenship' bill for illegal immigrants ( April 16, 2013 )
