Six Honduran migrants were detained by immigration authorities Thursday after they were found hiding in new cars being transported through Chiapas on a car carrier trailer.

The National Immigration Institute (INM) said three adults and three minors were found during a routine check of the cars after the trailer was stopped at a checkpoint in Palenque, which is near the southern border with Guatemala.

“The foreign migrants were lying down on the reclined seats of different cars,” the INM said in a statement.

It said they were unable to prove they had entered Mexico legally. The INM said the driver of the trailer, as well as his vehicle and the new cars he was transporting, were turned over to the federal Attorney General’s Office, which will conduct an investigation into the apparent migrant-smuggling operation.

The migrants were transported to an INM facility and will likely face deportation.

The institute didn’t say where the trailer was headed, but most migrants who enter Mexico via the southern border travel through the country with the intention of claiming asylum in the United States or entering that country illegally.

An average of more than 4,000 migrants – largely from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Haiti – crossed the southern border every day last year, an increase of over 40% compared to 2020.

With reports from El Heraldo de México and Reforma