Five Nicaraguan migrants died and eleven more were injured this Thursday, October 6, in a vehicle accident in Veracruz, a state in the Gulf of Mexico.
The events occurred on the La Tinaja-Cosamaloapan highwayat the height of the Loma de Los Pichones community in the municipality of Tierra Blanca, a region that is an obligatory passage for thousands of migrants seeking to reach the United States from southern Mexico and Central America.
According to police reports during the morning the vehicle they were traveling in overturned migrants of Nicaraguan origin who are heading to the United States. The names of the victims are unknown at this time.
Of the eleven Nicaraguans wounded, seven were taken to hospitals of the area, where they are reported serious. The injured were identified. like Carlos Uriel Galeano Reyes, 27 years old, Luis Miguel Araica, 28 years old, José Luis Velázquez Reyes, 37 years old; Jony Bermúdez Quiroz, 44 years old, Marci Gabriela Miranda Ortiz, 33 years old; Dani Arnobiz Ponele Castaño, 33 years old and Nelson Abedi Núñez Cruz, 31 years old.
According to the local media Consulta.com Veracruz, the migrants were traveling in a cream-colored 2006 Ford Expedition van with license plates YLT528A.
Cause of the accident
The first investigations by the National Guard established that the accident could have originated from various causes, such as speeding, lack of caution and probable mechanical failure.
Veracruz, due to its geographical location, is a strategic point on the migration routes from Central America to the United States.
However, the thousands of foreigners must navigate dangers and face mafias dedicated to kidnapping and extortionas well as organized crime carried out with drug trafficking.
45 migrants killed in 2022
The migration of Nicaraguans to the United States has increased considerably since July 2021. According to reports from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP, in English) since that month Until August 2022, 177,238 nationals have been detained61% of these traveled illegally this year.
They have also increased the number of Nicaraguans who died in their attempt to reach US soil. According to a monitoring CONFIDENTIAL between March and October 2022, the bodies of 45 nationals were identified, which already include the five deaths recorded this Thursday.
The causes of these deaths vary, but most have occurred due to drowning in the Rio Grande and traffic accidents. Among the dead are three minors and a pregnant woman.who was crushed to death by a human avalanche after being locked in a container.
Also, it is known about the disappearance of the girl Sofía Abigaíl Caballero, four years old, who tried to cross the Rio Grande with his mother, who drowned last May. Since that day the authorities and her family have searched for her, but without success.
The Texas Nicaraguan Community initiative warned a couple of weeks ago that morgues in the United States reached capacity maximum due to the increase in migrants who died in the Rio Grande. It is suspected that among the more than 200 bodies in the morgues of Laredo, Texas, there are unidentified bodies of Nicaraguans.
According to reports, given the overflow of their capacity, the orientation of the United States authorities is bury the bodies of migrants let them perish in the river from now on. This will represent one more expense for their families at the time of repatriation.
Accidents involving vehicles transporting migrants in Mexico have gained notoriety in recent months. Just last month, a passenger truck crashed in the border state of Tamaulipas after a pipe exploded, leaving 18 dead migrants. While in August, eight migrants from Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela died in a road accident in Puebla, in the center of the country.
According to official data from the Migration Policy Unit of the Ministry of the Interior (Segob) of Mexico, in the first seven months of 2022 there were 2040 Nicaraguans returnedthis figure is 2.8 times higher than that reported in the same period of 2021.
