They usually caught rides aboard passing trucks.īut Mexico has told truckers not to pick up migrants, saying they could face charges of migrant trafficking. Much larger caravans crossed Mexico in 20, but those migrants never tried to walk the whole distance. The National Immigration Institute said six cases of the tropical fever dengue had been detected among members of the migrant march. The Mexican government has been attempting to discourage the march, saying the poor conditions are putting the migrants’ lives at risk.

They have made slow progress trudging along highways amid the brutal heat of the region, advancing only about 95 miles (150 kilometers) in almost two weeks. The shooting occurred about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from where the migrant march was at the time.Īn estimated 4,000 migrants set out from the city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, on foot on Oct. The guard officers involved are now subject to a federal criminal investigation.Īpparently, the migrants in the truck were not part of some 4,000 mainly Central Americans who are seeking to reach Mexico City on foot. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador later said the shooting was unjustified, and that the pickup - apparently driven by a suspected migrant trafficker - had simply tried to run past the checkpoint, not ram the Guard vehicle. National Guard officers have been wary of confronting migrants since a shooting incident Sunday left one migrant dead.Ĭonfrontations between law enforcement and migrants had been relatively rare in Mexico, but National Guard officers opened fire on a pickup truck carrying migrants Sunday when the vehicle tried to avoid an immigration checkpoint the Guard said it had tried to ram a patrol vehicle.Ī Cuban migrant was killed and four other migrants were wounded. Video footage showed one of the guardsmen unconscious, with some migrants trying to help him while another threw a punch at him. So heavy was the rain of rocks that at least two guard officers tumbled from the trucks onto the highway below near the town of Pijijiapan, in the southern state of Chiapas.

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