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Crowded, abandoned and crying for help inside a roadside shipping container.
This is how the Guatemalan police found early this Saturday 126 migrants, who were rescued between the towns of Nueva Concepción and Cocales, in the south of the country.
Not long before, residents had reported that screams had been heard inside the caravan and had sounded the alarm.
Authorities believe the migrants were abandoned by smugglers who had been paid to take them to the United States via Mexico.
109 of the people rescued are from Haiti. There are also Nepalese (11) and Ghana (9), according to the National Civil Police (PNC).
“We hear screams and beatings”
Speaking via Twitter after the discovery, a police spokesperson said: ‘We heard scream and hit from inside the container. We opened the doors and found 126 undocumented migrants inside. “
Photographs released by police showed the migrants exiting the van with backpacks or sitting on the road.
Officers said they provided humanitarian assistance to migrants before escorting them to shelters run by the Guatemalan Migration Institute.
A spokeswoman for the Guatemalan immigration authority, Alejandra Mena, said the migrants had arrived at Honduras and from there they continued the dangerous journey north with the intention of reaching the United States.
Now they will be brought back to the border with Honduras and handed over to the authorities in that country.
Worrisome situation
The discovery comes just a day after Mexican authorities arrested 652 migrants including 355 minors, who traveled in three refrigerated double-trailer trucks near the southern border of the United States.
Soldiers at a military checkpoint in Tamaulipas, on the Mexico-Texas border, searched the trucks after hearing voices inside.
Authorities were able to detect that 564 migrants came from Guatemala, 39 from Honduras, 20 from El Salvador, 28 from Nicaragua and one from Belize.
According to reports, at least 197 of the minors were traveling alone.
The incident reflects growing concern over the number of migrants, including a large number of Haitians, who take risks in their attempts to reach the United States.
According to the Panamanian prosecutor’s office, since early 2021, more than 50 migrants have died trying to cross the Darien Gap, a jungle corridor on the border with Colombia.
Haiti suffered years of instability culminating with the assassination of President Jouvenal Moïse in July. The following month, the country was hit by a deadly earthquake.
Thousands of Haitians had already left the country in search of work in Latin American countries.
Many began to try to reach the United States with the belief that they could claim the Temporary protection status, a temporary right to stay in the country which has been extended to Haitians already living in the North American country, but not to new arrivals.
Last month, approximately 13,000 Haitians they met under a bridge that connects Del Río, Texas, to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. The United States has since deported more than 7,500 people to Haiti, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
US Special Envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned in protest against the evictions and said returnees fleeing an earthquake and political instability were “inhuman“.
Marsha Espinosa, of the US Department of Homeland Security, reiterated that “our borders are not open and people should not make the dangerous journey (to the United States)”.
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