Mexican police find more than 500 migrants in two trucks

May 17, 2011, 19:52 GMT

Mexico City - Mexican police found 513 Latin American and Asian migrants being held in inhumane conditions inside two trucks in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, authorities said Tuesday.

The two truck drivers were arrested, the state public prosecutor's office said. The migrants - including 32 women and four minors - were mostly Guatemalan, although nationals from El Salvador, Ecuador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nepal, India, Japan and China were also present.

Mexico's migration authorities were making contact with the consulates of the countries involved, in order to identify the migrants and return them home.

The raid took place early Tuesday on a road near the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez. The migrants, including a pregnant woman and an 11-year-old girl, were discovered using X-ray devices. One of the trucks held 240 migrants, while the other carried 273.

The migrants told Chiapas authorities that they each paid 7,000 dollars to get to the United States.

Chiapas is on the usual route for migrants passing through Mexico from its southern border to the United States. Human traffickers charge thousands of dollars for the trip, but they often abandon the migrants along the way or hand them over to other criminal organizations, which then extort their families to set the migrants free.

Last year, 72 Central and South American migrants were killed on a ranch in San Fernando, in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, allegedly by the criminal gang Los Zetas.

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