They find 65 migrants, including one from Ecuador, in a safe house in Mexico

A total of 65 migrants from Guatemala, Nicaragua and Ecuador, including 16 minors, were found this Wednesday in a safe house in the community of Tepanco de López, southeast of the state of Puebla, central Mexico, reported the National Institute of Migration (INM).

In a statement, the INM, dependent on the Secretariat (ministry) of the Interior, reported that the location of the migrants derived from intelligence work in which INM agents and state and municipal police intervened.

This as part of the national strategy to address the migratory flow and combat human trafficking.

The INM specified that 61 people come from Guatemala, including 16 girls and boys, as well as 45 adult women and men.

Of the remaining four, three are from Nicaragua, and one from Ecuador, who at the time of their discovery did not have a regular stay in Mexican territory and were seeking to reach the border with the United States.

Since October 2018, and despite the tightening of surveillance on Mexico’s southern border, thousands of migrants from Central America, but also from Cuba, Haiti and various African and Asian countries have entered Mexican territory with the aim of reaching the United States. United.

Human traffickers look for routes for foreigners and sometimes station themselves in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Puebla as an intermediate stop on their journey to the US.

Currently, the region is experiencing a record flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office detected more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants on the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30.

Mexico has intercepted more than 252,000 undocumented migrants from January to November and deported more than 100,000 in the same period, according to the Migration Policy Unit of the country’s Interior Ministry.

In addition, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) received a record 131,448 refugee applications in 2021. Of these, more than 51,000 are Haitians. (I)