A truck with illegal immigrants crashed in Mexico: 53 people died

A truck carrying Central American migrants overturned and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway in southern Mexico. The accident killed at least 53 people and injured dozens. The edition told in more detail USA Today.

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The Office of the Prosecutor General reported that, according to preliminary information, 53 people were killed, 3 were in critical condition.

Luis Manuel Moreno, head of the Civil Defense Authority of Chiapas, Mexico, said 21 people were seriously injured. They were all taken to local hospitals.

The accident occurred on the highway leading to the state capital of Chiapas. The victims turned out to be immigrants from Central America, although their nationality has not yet been confirmed. Some of the survivors said they were from the neighboring country, Guatemala, Moreno said.

One of the surviving Guatemalans, Celso Pacheco, said he felt the truck speed up and then lost control.

According to him, migrants from Guatemala and Honduras were traveling in the truck, among whom (according to various estimates) there were from eight to ten small children. He explained that he wanted to get to the United States, but now thinks that he will be deported to Guatemala.

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Rescuers among a pile of people in an overturned trailer were trying to find the survivors, separating the wounded from the dead.

Marco Antonio Sánchez, head of the Chiapas fire department, said ambulances took the victims to three hospitals, each with three to four casualties. According to him, when there were not enough ambulances, the victims were loaded into pickups.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei tweeted: "I deeply regret the tragedy in Chiapas and express my solidarity to the families of the victims, to whom we will offer all necessary consular assistance, including repatriation."

According to Moreno, the speed and total weight of the truck's passengers could have caused the accident. The consequences were aggravated by the fact that during the rollover the car hit the base of the steel pedestrian bridge. There was a turn near the crash site that may have contributed to the incident.

There were at least 107 people in the car. Trucks in Mexico often carry that many people during migrant smuggling operations.

But rescuers, who were the first to arrive at the scene and were not authorized to give their names, assured that in fact there were more migrants, but after the accident they fled for fear of falling into the hands of immigration agents.

One of the paramedics noticed that some of the fugitives were covered in blood or bruises, but still, in complete despair, they fled.

The vehicle was a closed cargo module that was used to transport perishable goods. The container was smashed by the force of the impact. It is unknown if the driver survived.

The surviving migrants described how they got into a truck in Mexico, near the border with Guatemala, and paid some $ 2500 and some $ 3500 for delivery to the central Mexican state of Puebla. Once there, they would likely have contracted another group of migrant smugglers to take them to the US border.

In recent months, Mexican authorities have tried to prevent illegal immigrants from making their way to the border with the United States, but the secret and illegal flow of people continued.

In October, in one of the largest arrests in recent memory, authorities in the northern border state of Tamaulipas found 652 migrants, mostly from Central America, trapped in a convoy of six trucks heading for the US border.

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Irineo Mujica, an activist leading a march of several hundred migrants who have been marching in southern Mexico for almost a month and a half, blamed the tragedy on Mexico's policy of suppressing migrant caravans.

Mujica and his group almost reached the outskirts of Mexico City after weeks of fighting with National Guard officers who were trying to block the march. He said that the group would stop and offer prayers for the lost brothers.

“These rules are killing us and leading to these kinds of tragedies,” Mujica stressed.

These are two very different groups. Caravans usually attract migrants who do not have the thousands of dollars needed to pay the smugglers.

Migrants in serious accidents are often allowed to stay in Mexico, at least temporarily, because they are considered witnesses and victims of crime. Mexico's National Immigration Institute said it would offer humanitarian visas to survivors.

The department said that the Mexican government will help identify the victims and cover the costs of the funeral or repatriation of their remains.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tried desperately to avoid mass deaths of migrants, although his administration complied with a request from the US government to stop the flow of migrants moving north.

It is one of the worst migrant deaths in Mexico in one day since the massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in 2010 in the state of Tamaulipas.

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