Guatemalan police find 54 Haitian migrants in a truck trailer

The police of Guatemala reported Tuesday that it found 54 migrants Haitians hidden in the trailer of a truck that was traveling through the south of the country, in an attempt to reach Mexico and then the United States.

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The group consisted of 20 adult men and 20 women and 14 minors. One of the minors was traveling unaccompanied by an adult, police spokesman Jorge Aguilar said in a statement.

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“54 Haitians were located and rescued (…) at kilometer 34 on the Pacific road,” a road that runs to the border with Mexico, Aguilar explained in the press release.

Two Guatemalans were captured in the operation as allegedly responsible for driving the truck, according to the spokesman.

The Haitians “were immediately provided assistance and were transferred to the border of El Florido, Agua Caliente, between Guatemala and Honduras,” from where they entered the country irregularly, he said.

The Central American region, in which every year thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans emigrate to the United States in search of better living conditions, also faces a crisis due to the passage of a wave of thousands of Haitians seeking to reach North America.

Haitian migrants arrive in Guatemala from South America and mostly cross the dangerous Darien jungle on foot, from Colombia to Panama.

So far this year, more than fifty migrants have died while trying to cross this region, according to the Panamanian prosecutor’s office.

The 266 km long jungle border between Panama and Colombia has become a corridor for irregular migration.

In 2021, according to official Panamanian figures, more than 107,000 people from South America have crossed the Darien jungle to cross Central America on their way to the United States. This figure is almost the equivalent of the accumulated figure of the last six years.

Panamanian authorities estimate that this year 150,000 will make the dangerous Darien route, plagued by wild animals, mighty rivers and criminal groups.

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Deshawn