The incident highlights the ongoing risks to migrants and asylum seekers in border areas controlled by criminal gangs.
Two Mexican migrants were shot dead on the Mexican side of the border with the United States, Mexico’s National Migration Institute said.
The incident occurred in the early hours of Friday morning. Another three people suffered gunshot wounds but were treated by one of the institute’s emergency rescue teams, along with nine others who were uninjured.
Rescue workers found the group of 14 Mexican nationals at dawn on Cuchuma Hill near Tecate, a city in the border state of Baja California. When the rescuers approached the group, two migrants were already dead.
Rescuers discovered 14 migrants on Cuchuma Hill, some of them injured in a dawn attack [Mexico’s National Institute of Migration/Handout via Reuters]The rugged desert hill is considered a sacred site by at least one Mexican indigenous group, but is also used by people smugglers.
The reason for the shooting is unknown, but border crossings in certain regions may involve agreements with local cartels for right of passage. Migrants and asylum seekers are sometimes shot if their smuggler works for a rival gang or if they have not paid for transit rights.
Migrants and asylum seekers are also often robbed in border areas by roving gangs of thieves and kidnappers.
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 officers of murder.
In this case, officers had initially argued that they were responding to shots fired and believed they were chasing Gulf Cartel vehicles. But the state police burned the bodies to cover up the crime.
The two deaths in Tecate are the latest in a rapidly growing number of migrants and asylum seekers killed or injured at Mexico’s northern and southern borders in a desperate attempt to reach the United States.
A truck overturned on the highway Thursday in Chiapas, one of three southern Mexican states bordering Guatemala, killing two Central American migrants and injuring 27 more.
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 a day before the crash, two other Central American migrants died after trying to board a moving train in Coahuila state, near the Texas border.