229 migrants calling for help found in back of truck in eastern Mexico

XALAPA, México (AP) — Mexican authorities found 229 migrants on Monday packed in the back of a truck traveling through the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, the first such encounter in months, marking a potential uptick in migration since U.S. President Donald Trump took office.

José Manuel Pozos, the state's deputy government secretary, said that they found migrants trapped in a truck reported stolen after they began to call for help from a police impound lot. Most of the migrants were from Central America, 17 were minors and a number were dehydrated, he said.

Veracruz is one of a number of states that masses of migrants have historically crossed to reach the United States, and are preyed upon by cartels and other criminal groups. They are often packed into trucks in dangerous conditions to evade authorities while being smuggled north.

But as migration north has plummeted since Trump took office, cases are few and far between.

An employee at the Xalapa vehicle impound lot, where the truck was taken, told The Associated Press that the trailer had been stopped about 45 kilometers (28 miles) southeast of the city and that hours after arriving at the lot, workers began to hear shouting and banging coming from inside.

When they realized people were locked inside, they called emergency services to open the vehicle, said the worker, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

In the afternoon, the migrants were removed from the impound lot in state police buses, but Veracruz police did not report where they were being taken. Generally, migrants without legal status are handed over to Mexico’s immigration agency.

Over the years, migrant smugglers have used all kinds of vehicles to transport foreigners through Mexico, usually overcrowded, in poor conditions, and at risk of dying in the process, as happened in a deadly accident in southern Mexico in 2021 or when 53 migrants died after being abandoned inside a truck in San Antonio, Texas, in 2022.

Many times, trailers are specially modified to smuggle people with hidden compartments in case of inspections. Fake ambulances have even been used to evade checkpoints.

From 2022 to 2024, Mexican authorities greatly increased the seizure of these vehicles and the detention of migrants traveling inside them. While migration levels have taken a nose dive over the past year, migration north appears to be slowly picking up again.

This year, shelters in southern Mexico told the AP that in addition to receiving non-Mexican foreigners deported by Trump, they have once again begun to take in Central Americans heading north, although in very small numbers.

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