Two Mexican migrants were shot dead in a dawn attack near Tecate, across the border from California
September 29, 2023, 5:26 p.m. ET
• 2 min reading
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two Mexican migrants were shot dead on the Mexican side of the U.S. border in the early hours of Friday morning, Mexico’s National Migration Institute said.
Three others suffered gunshot wounds but were treated by one of the institute’s emergency rescue teams, along with another nine people who remained uninjured.
Rescue workers found a 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.
The rugged desert hill is considered a sacred site by at least one Mexican indigenous group, but is also used by migrant smugglers.
The reason for the shooting is not known, but migrant border crossings often require agreements with local cartels over right of passage. Sometimes migrants are shot if their smuggler works for a rival gang or if they have not paid for transit rights.
Even in border areas, migrants are often robbed 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, and then burned their bodies. 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 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.
According to the Mexican Migration Institute, 52 migrants were traveling in an overcrowded dump truck on Friday 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.