U.S. authorities have identified at least 50 undocumented migrants bound for the United States and the Mexican states of Texas and New Mexico after authorities found them, mostly men, crammed into two semi-trailers that crashed on the Highway Five logging road in northern Veracruz, Mexico, officials said.
The migrants, of six nationalities, were discovered by federal authorities at about 2 a.m. Saturday. Mexico’s Civil Protection Center said Saturday evening that the migrants appeared to be mostly from Central America.
“Our investigation has determined that [some migrants] had arrived in the border states of Texas and New Mexico,” as well as northern Veracruz, the Civil Protection Center said in a statement. “Among them, 40 had already arrived in McAllen, Texas, but there is no information on the rest of the migrants.”
The truck, traveling from Mexico City to La Paz, had two trailers loaded with several hundred passengers. At about 1:45 a.m., the vehicles crashed, spilling migrants along the roadway, where they were found. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
The nonprofit National Citizen Information Center recorded 27 migrants in the vehicles at the time of the crash, the Veracruz Public Safety Department said in a statement.
The Mexican government was distributing 45 kilograms of vaccinations to migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on Saturday, the NCAIC said. Thirty-five families from Honduras and El Salvador were to be distributed on Sunday.
The center on Saturday held free inoculations to 150 migrants from Honduras and El Salvador “who arrived in the States via accident,” the statement said. Officials were also checking the records of 163 migrants from those countries who were registered in December for free inoculations, according to the statement.
“It is hoped that our collaboration with these two NGOs will continue this way as the Mexicans should not be forced to abandon or go home,” the Veracruz Pd said in a statement.