Mexican authorities are searching for 37 undocumented migrants from Cuba and Central America taken from a government bus at gunpoint by ski-masked men with assault rifles. Authorities say the gunmen belong to a human trafficking ring. Police found the empty bus, and no sign of the migrants or the assailants, on the morning of June 12 near Ocosingo, Chiapas. The seven guards and two bus drivers were left on the highway.
The 34 Cubans were arrested by Mexican naval forces on June 7 on a yacht off the resort city of Cancún. They had apparently left Havana on a makeshift boat and were hoping for transit to Florida. The three Central Americans had been working construction jobs in Cancún before being detained. The migrants were being transported to a detention center in Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, to await deportation. (AFP [2], June 14; AP [3], June 13)
See our last posts on the Mexican crime wars [4] and Chiapas [5].
