They find 153 abandoned migrants in a truck in southern Mexico

Some 153 migrants were found crammed together and abandoned in a truck in the southern Mexican municipality of Chiapa de Corzo, local authorities reported Thursday.

The Police of the southern state of Chiapas indicated in a statement that of the foreigners, 144 are from Guatemala, six from Nicaragua and three from El Salvador. He added that the group was helped and handed over to the National Migration Institute of Mexico.

The truck was found abandoned on the Chiapa de Corzo-La Angostura federal highway, just six kilometers from the site where 56 migrants died after a trailer overturned in December last year.

An official from the state Attorney General’s Office said that the migrants, who entered Mexico irregularly through the border with Guatemala, were concentrated in the municipality of Comitán to be transported in the truck. He added that the smugglers used roads with less surveillance to circumvent the inspection points installed on the Pan-American highway with the most vehicular traffic.

This is the second mass seizure of migrants in less than a month in this region of the country. In August, 82 Central Americans were seized in two trucks in San Cristóbal de las Casas. A month earlier in the same area, 115 migrants were seized and six suspected traffickers were arrested.

The flow of migrants through southern Mexico remains on the rise. About twenty migrant caravans, between 200 and 500 people, have walked out of Tapachula in the last two months in search of reaching the United States.

According to figures from the authorities, some 77,786 migrants have requested asylum from January to August, a figure higher than the 76,643 requests that were made in the same period last year. Migrants from Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua head the list.

Last year, Mexico broke the record for applicants in the last decade, registering 130,000 foreigners. In 2013, the requests were only 1,296 migrants.

Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and turn on notifications, or follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.