Six migrants were shot dead near the Guatemalan border when Mexican army troops opened fire

MEXICO CITY – Mexican army troops opened fire on a truck carrying migrants from half a dozen countries, and six migrants from Egypt, Peru and El Salvador were killed in an event that President Claudia Sheinbaum described Thursday as “regrettable.”

Ten other migrants were injured in the shooting. Sheinbaum did not say how many migrants from each country had been killed, and Mexico’s foreign relations department could not immediately provide details.

The Peruvian Foreign Ministry confirmed that one Peruvian was killed and demanded an “urgent investigation” into the killings. The two countries have had damaged relations since a diplomatic row in 2022.

Sheinbaum said the two soldiers who opened fire on Tuesday, her first day in office, had been turned over to civilian prosecutors for questioning but apparently had not yet been charged. It was the worst killing of migrants by authorities in Mexico since police in the northern state of Tamaulipas killed 17 migrants in 2021.

She said the shootings are being investigated to see if commanders may be punished, noting that “a situation like this cannot be repeated.”

But she made no mention of that later Thursday at a massive meeting at an army base in Mexico City, where army and navy commanders pledged their loyalty to her in front of massive combat vehicles and hundreds of troops.

“In our country there is no martial law, there are no human rights violations,” Sheinbaum said, promising pay increases for soldiers and sailors.

The shootings took place on Tuesday near the town of Huixtla, in the southern state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, the Mexican Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

The department said soldiers claimed they heard shots as a convoy of three trucks approached the soldiers’ position. In a somewhat confused story, the department said the first vehicle in a three-truck convoy appeared to be speeding away from soldiers.

Two soldiers shot at another truck, which was also carrying migrants from Nepal, Cuba, India, Pakistan and at least one other country. Soldiers then approached the truck and found four of the migrants dead and twelve injured. Two of the injured later died of their injuries.

Local prosecutors confirmed that all victims died of gunshot wounds. The Defense Department did not say whether the migrants died as a result of army fire, and Sheinbaum declined to say whether any weapons were found in the migrants’ truck.

There were seventeen other migrants in the truck, who were unharmed. The vehicle was carrying a total of 33 migrants. The area is a common route for smuggling migrants, who are often packed into overcrowded trucks. It has also been the scene of battles involving drug cartels, and the department said the trucks were “similar to those used by criminal groups in the region.”

The two soldiers who opened fire were also relieved of duty pending investigations. In Mexico, any incident involving civilians is subject to civil prosecution, but soldiers can also be court-martialed for these crimes.

Irineo Mujica, a migrant rights activist who has regularly accompanied caravans of migrants in that area of ​​Chiapas, said he doubted whether the migrants or their smugglers opened fire.

“It is really impossible that these people would have shot at the military,” Mujica said. “They usually get through by paying bribes.”

Mexico’s Roman Catholic Bishops’ Council called the killings “a disproportionate use of lethal force” and said in a statement that “this tragedy is not an isolated incident.”

“Rather, it is the result of the militarization of immigration policies and the increased presence of military forces at the country’s southern border,” the report said.

If the deaths were the result of army fire, as seems likely, it could be a major embarrassment to Sheinbaum.

The new president has followed the example of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador by giving the armed forces extraordinary powers in law enforcement, state-owned enterprises, airports, trains and construction projects.

It is not the first time Mexican troops have opened fire on vehicles carrying migrants in the area, which is also the focus of battles between warring drug cartels.

In 2021, the quasi-military National Guard opened fire on a pickup truck carrying migrants, killing one and wounding four. The guards initially claimed that some of the people in the migrant truck were armed and had fired shots, but the government’s National Human Rights Commission later found this to be untrue.

And in 2021, state police in Tamaulipas killed seventeen migrants and two Mexican citizens. These officers also initially claimed that they had come under fire from the migrants’ vehicles.

They initially claimed they were responding to the shots fired and believed they were pursuing the vehicles of one of the country’s drug cartels, which regularly participate in migrant smuggling. But that later turned out to be untrue, and police actually burned the victims’ bodies in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Eleven police officers were convicted of murder and sentenced to more than 50 years in prison.

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