The Mexican government intercepted 1,608 migrants, including 55 Venezuelans, in a period of just one day in different operations, according to what was reported this Sunday by the National Institute of Migration (INM).
The government agency asserted that it “rescued” all these migrants last Friday, “with which they were prevented from being victims of crimes and violations of their human rights during their transit through Mexican territory.”
“Of this total, 1,398 are elderly people (424 women and 974 men) and 210 minors (82 women and 128 men), who were left under the guardianship and protection of the System for the Integral Development of the Family (DIF) in the entity in which they were rescued,” he said in a statement.
Most of the migrants were from Central and South America, with 357 from Guatemala, 296 from Honduras, 195 from Colombia, 189 from Cuba, 113 from Nicaragua, 96 from El Salvador, 60 from Peru, 56 from Brazil and 55 from Venezuela.
But there were also 29 from the African country Comoros, 19 from Haiti, 16 from both the United States and Ethiopia, 14 from the Philippines, 13 from France, and 11 from Ecuador and also from Turkey.
While from Angola there were 8; Bolivia and North Macedonia, 7, respectively; India, 6; Bangladeshi, 5; Chinese, 4; Lesotho, 4; Bosnia and Herzegovina, 3; and closing with Spain, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Senegal and Guinea, 2 migrants for each country.
There was also one person, respectively, from Romania, Georgia, Belize, Togo, Belarus, Cameroon, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Ivory Coast.
The INM, which reports to the Ministry of the Interior (Segob), did not clarify the reasons why it rescued or intercepted these migrants, nor did it specify whether they are regularly in the country.
Most of the rescues, 374, occurred in Chiapas, a state bordering Guatemala, followed by northern Baja California, 262, and Nuevo León, 199.
There were also operations in Mexico City, 168; Tabasco, 152; Coahuila, 111; Tamaulipas, 97; Veracruz, 50; San Luis Potosi, 47; Quintana Roo, 26; Sound, 22; Oaxaca, 20; Puebla, 18; Chihuahua, 18; Durango, 17; Tlaxcala, 8; Yucatan, 6; Jalisco, 5; Zacatecas, 5; Sinaloa, 2 and Colima, 1.
In the operations with federal, state and municipal authorities, four vehicles were seized and made available to the Public Ministry (MP) in the state of Tamaulipas and one in Tlaxcala.
“Likewise, four likely responsible for committing a crime in Tamaulipas, in addition, an intervention was carried out on the railway in Coahuila and a safe house in San Luis Potosí was reviewed,” the INM indicated.
The events occur in the middle of the tour that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is making to Central America, where he has traveled from Thursday to Sunday to address migration with his counterparts.
The region is experiencing a record migratory flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office detected more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants on the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30.
