Mexico: Authorities Discover Fake Ambulance Carrying 28 Migrants, Including 9 Unaccompanied Children

Authorities in Mexico on Saturday said they found a fake ambulance loaded with 28 Nicaraguans, including nine unaccompanied children.

Mexican officials noted that this was one of the many strange schemes they discovered to smuggle Central American migrants to the U.S. border.

Mexico Officials Find Migrants Inside Ambulance with Fake Government Hospital Emblems

According to Mexico's Interior Department, the vehicle has been painted with fake symbols and marks from a government hospital network. The fake ambulance was apprehended in the Pacific coast state of Oaxaca.

The National Migration Institute said the driver was arrested after he attempted to pass himself off as a health care worker. Not unless they are the victims of a crime, migrants found in such circumstances are usually returned to their home countries.

Immigrant traffickers in Mexico usually try to smuggle migrants in buses or freight trucks. To avoid being scrutinized, their vehicles are often painted with the logos of well-known firms.

Caravan of 500 Migrants Leaves Southern Mexico Heading to the U.S.

Another caravan, this time with over 500 migrants seeking to reach the United States, left Tapachula, Chiapas on Thursday. The caravan is reportedly the first to leave the southern border city this year.

The group left the premises of the government's National Migration Institute (INM) offices on Thursday evening. Members of the group said they applied for documentation to allow them to legally leave Tapachula and move freely in Mexico.

However, newspaper Milenio reported that they were not given a response to their applications. The caravan comprises Central Americans, with some Haitians, Venezuelans, and Columbians. Reports said there were also Africans who joined them.

Several migrants were told to go to the Mexican Refugee Commission (COMAR) for the necessary paperwork. However, getting an appointment may take up to three months.

The migrants were not permitted to leave the city or work in the meantime. But the group still departed Tapachula on foot with no food or water, hoping that human rights and migrant relief organizations would be able to assist them along the way.

Many of the migrants marched through the city earlier that day to call attention to their plight. The marchers demanded that the federal government provide them with an opportunity to get their immigration status verified or papers that would allow them to move around Mexico legally and without the fear of deportation.

The town of Tapachula, which is near the Guatemala border, has become a focal point of the immigration crisis. Numerous caravans have originated in the city as frustrated migrants march north, some intending to stay in Mexico while others hope to reach the United States.

In December, the INM reported that more than 4,000 migrants were crossing the border daily, and COMAR has been swamped by a surge of asylum requests - more than 130,000 in 2021.

In the 2021 fiscal year, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) took more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants into custody, an all-time record.

According to INM, officials in Mexico found more than 3,000 migrants in the country illegally over the past 48 hours. That includes the 500 migrants from Tapachula and 28 migrants found inside the fake ambulance.

The INM added that 380 more migrants were found in the western Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, with one group on a tour bus and another group in a trailer.

The administration of President Joe Biden has struggled to address an upsurge of migrants entering the US-Mexico border, mostly from Central America. During Biden's first year in office, immigration agents in the U.S. faced the largest number of illegal border crossings in two decades.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

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