(USNewsMag.com) – On Nov. 8, 123 South and Central American migrants, including 34 children, were rescued from inside a locked trailer by authorities in Mexico. The migrants were rescued after a local resident in the city of Matehuala heard the migrants yelling for help from inside the trailer.
According to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, the migrants were freed and then given medical assistance and food, as well as temporary accommodations.
How the migrants, who were mostly from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras, became stuck in the trailer is unknown. Officials said four of the migrants were from Ecuador and one from Cuba. Though the migrant’s final destination is unknown, most fleeing poverty and crime in those countries typically head toward the United States.
Just across the border from El Paso, Texas, three alleged human smugglers were arrested Nov. 8 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after 11 Guatemalan migrants were found trapped in a house. An investigation into the suspects, two of whom are 16 years old, has been opened by the Chihuahua Attorney General.
The migrant rescues occurred while a 7,000-person caravan of migrants seeking asylum traveled through southern Mexico toward the border of the United States. Close to 3,000 migrants blocked a highway on Nov. 8 near the southern town of Huixtla in Chiapas. The migrants stated they felt gangs seeking to be paid for safe passage could attack them. The migrants hoped that the protest would pressure Mexican authorities into giving them temporary papers, which would allow them to travel toward the border of the United States.
So far in 2023, over 400,000 migrants have crossed the Darien Gap from Colombia into Panama, an increase of 150,000 from 2022. Since October 2022, over 2.2 million migrants have been detained by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorities along the southern border.
The influx of migrants at the border has led to migrants being relocated to the interior of the United States and into places such as Chicago and New York City. This has led to a crisis in the cities, with leaders calling on the Biden administration to offer the cities more federal resources to assist with the migrants.
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