Mexico City.- The National Institute of Migration (INM) of Mexico found 89 migrants from Ecuador, Honduras and Egypt who were abandoned on a bus in Veracruz, the eastern state of the country.
The INM revealed in a statement this Friday that federal Migration agents found 79 migrants from Egypt, five from Ecuador and five more from Honduras on the Córdoba-Boca del Río highway, where the foreigners were wearing a plastic bracelet with the legend “ TORIBIO”, although its meaning was not clarified.
“These are six family units made up of 15 people between adults and minors, who traveled with 73 women and men of legal age alone and one unaccompanied child,” the institute detailed in a brief bulletin.
Córdoba municipal police were the first to detect the vehicle in which the migrants were crowded.
Later, the National Guard, the State Police of Veracruz, the Municipal Police and the Civil Force transferred the migrants to an INM headquarters where they were provided with water and food.
“Family nuclei and the unaccompanied minor will remain under the guardianship of the System for the Comprehensive Development of the Family,” the INM said, without further details on the fate of the other migrants or pointing out alleged traffickers.
The transport of migrants in overcrowded conditions reflects the unprecedented migratory flow in the region, with more than 2.76 million undocumented migrants intercepted by the United States at the border with Mexico during fiscal year 2022.
For its part, Mexico registered an annual increase of more than 43% in the number of “persons in an irregular situation” in the country in the past year, when the authorities detected 444,439 migrants.
