MEXICO CITY: Mexican officials have captured more than 200 migrants hidden in trucks over the past two days, including dozens spotted by a large X-ray scanner huddled in secret compartments, as the country steps up a crackdown under US pressure.
Footage of the X-ray shows a ghost-like truck filled with the brightened silhouettes of the migrants – some sitting and others lying down – along two levels of the crowded compartments on Sunday.
An additional 228 hidden migrants were found in a routine search of a soft drink transportation truck in the southern state of Chiapas on Monday, Mexico’s security ministry said in a statement.
The apprehensions come weeks after the appointment of hard-charging former prisons chief Francisco Garduno as the new head of Mexico’s immigration authority, the National Migration Institute (INM).
Under Garduno, the agency has made a number of high-profile captures of migrants smuggled in commercial vehicles. The weekend Garduno took office, INM found 800 people in four trucks in the eastern state of Veracruz.
Mexico’s stepped-up efforts to stop record flows of mainly Guatemalans, Hondurans and El Salvadorans reaching the United States follow a June 7 deal under which Mexico averted tariffs threatened by US President Donald Trump with a promise to use security forces to intercept more undocumented migrants.
In another video of the X-ray-assisted detention released by Mexican authorities, an official approached the cargo vehicle at night to open the door to one of the crates. Sobs emerged from the otherwise-quiet container while he identified himself as a police officer and asked if migrants were in good health.
