Traffickers steal bright purple bus to send migrants north

June 8, 2021

A National Guardsman in front of the stolen bus Monday in Tlaxcala.

Human traffickers chose a bright purple bus to steal near Mexico City in order to transport migrants toward the U.S. border but they didn’t get far.

The bus was stopped on a highway in Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala, on Monday by the National Guard after they identified it from a stolen vehicle report.

At least 57 migrants, 16 of whom were minors, from Haiti, Chile, Brazil and Honduras were found on the bus, traveling in the direction of Hidalgo toward Monterrey, Nuevo León.

Passengers told officers that they had paid for the trip to Monterrey and planned to travel to the U.S. border from there.

The migrants were taken to the offices of the National Guard in Calpulalpan and then transferred to the Tlaxcala immigration office. Unaccompanied minors were handed over to child welfare authorities and the driver was detained.

Migration is the central topic of today’s meeting between President López Obrador and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

So far this year, Mexican authorities have detained 90,850 migrants, mainly from Central America, and deported 42,000 of them. About half of the total were from Honduras, followed by Guatemala and El Salvador. Twenty percent of all the migrants detained were under 18.