513 Mexican migrants found in two US-bound trailer trucks

Police in Mexico's southern Chiapas state have found 513 migrants inside two trailer trucks bound for the US, and said they had been transported in dangerously crowded conditions. Some of the immigrants were suffering from dehydration after travelling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright and to 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 onto a second set of vehicles for the trip to the US border.


YouTube link.

None of the migrants would say whether any drug gangs had been involved in the mass smuggling scheme broken up early on 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 Gutiérrez.



The migrants said the smugglers were charging them about $7,000 (£4,303) apiece to get them into the US. 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.