Global Courant
The incident underlines the ongoing risks for migrants and asylum seekers in border areas controlled by criminal gangs.
Two Mexican migrants have been shot dead on the Mexican side of the border with the United States, Mexico’s National Migration Institute said.
The incident took place in the early hours of Friday morning. Another three people suffered gunshot wounds but were assisted by one of the institute’s emergency rescue teams, along with nine others who were not injured.
Rescuers found the group of 14 Mexican nationals at dawn on Cuchuma Hill near Tecate, a city in the border state of Baja California. By the time rescuers climbed up to meet the group, two migrants were already dead.
Rescuers discovered 14 migrants on Cuchuma Hill, some injured in a pre-dawn attack (Mexico’s National Institute of Migration/Handout via Reuters)
The rugged desert hillside is considered a sacred site by at least one Mexican indigenous group, but is also used by human smugglers.
The cause of the shooting is not known, but border crossings in certain regions may involve agreements with local cartels over rights of passage. Migrants and asylum seekers are sometimes shot dead if their smuggler works for a rival gang or if they have not paid rights of passage.
Migrants and asylum seekers are also often robbed by roving gangs of thieves and kidnappers in border areas.
In one notable case in 2021, Tamaulipas state police shot and killed 19 people at the border, including at least 14 Guatemalan migrants. A court recently convicted eleven police officers of murder.
In that case, officers had initially claimed they were responding to shots fired and believed they were pursuing Gulf Cartel vehicles. But state police burned the bodies in an attempt to cover up the crime.
The two deaths in Tecate are the latest in a rapidly growing number of migrants and asylum seekers who have been killed or injured at Mexico’s northern and southern borders in a desperate attempt to reach the US.
A truck overturned on a highway in Chiapas, one of three southern Mexican states bordering Guatemala, on Thursday, killing two Central American migrants and injuring another 27.
And on Friday, Mexico’s Migration Institute said 52 migrants were traveling in an overcrowded dump truck when the driver lost control and overturned. The injured, including six children, were taken to hospital, where they were all issued legal asylum cards, as victims of a crime on Mexican territory.
Just the day before the crash, two more Central American migrants died after trying to board a moving train in Coahuila state, near the Texas border.
