Municipalities in Sonora and Zacatecas were added to the list of places the United States Department of State recommends U.S. citizens not travel in its updated 2019 Mexico Travel Advisory, while two were given the green light.

Municipalities to avoid that were not listed as such on the 2018 advisory include Empalme, Guaymas, Obregón and Navojoa in Sonora and Fresnillo, Zacatecas.

San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León, and Gómez Palacio, Durango, were removed from the list.

As with the advisory issued in November 2018, U.S. citizens are advised not to travel to the states of Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas.

High levels of crime were cited as reasons for avoiding those states, while kidnappings were also seen as a threat in Tamaulipas.

Eleven states remain in the Level 3 category, which advises U.S. citizens to reconsider traveling to them due to crime. They are Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Jalisco, México state, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Sonora and Zacatecas.

Although federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo reported on Tuesday that Guanajuato has recorded the highest number of murders in the country so far this year, a representative at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City told Mexico News Daily that Guanajuato was “not experiencing that crisis” during the period the State Department collected its data.

Source: El Universal (sp), El Heraldo de México (sp)