Mexico Finds 343 Migrants, Including 103 Unaccompanied Minors, in Abandoned Trailer

Mexican immigration authorities said they discovered 343 migrants, including 103 unaccompanied minors, Sunday night in an abandoned tractor trailer bound in the U.S.

According to a news release from the National Institute of Migration of the Ministry of the Interior, the group was found alive in a freight container on a trailer along the Cosamaloapan-La Tinaja highway in the state of Veracruz, which is in southeast Mexico along the Gulf of Mexico.

It said most of the unaccompanied minors were from Guatemala — 212 adults were from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Ecuador, and 28 made up several families from Guatemala and El Salvador.

The release said the unaccompanied minors will remain under the guardianship of the state of Veracruz's System for the Integral Development of the Family. Adult migrants will be processed through Mexico's immigration system.

The National Institute of Migration said the trailer had a double floor of metal structures, as well as fans anchored in the lower part and vents in the ceiling. The migrants wore colored bracelets as a means of identification.

Migrants are typically smuggled by trafficking cartels in tractor trailers to make the perilous trip to the United States.

On Jan. 30, the National Institute of Migration said it found 170 migrants inside four cargo trucks on a highway in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, south of El Paso, Texas. On Jan. 18, Mexican immigration officials found 269 migrants from four Central and South American countries who were crowded into the back of a trailer located on a highway at a verification checkpoint in Chiapa de Corzo in the state of Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border.

• Mexico Finds 57 Adolescent Migrants Crammed into Truck
• 94 Migrants Escape Suffocation in Truck in Mexico