Mexico's struggle to contain the massive flow of migrants seeking to reach its border with United States took a tragic turn Monday when authorities discovered the dead body of a 25-year-old man inside the cargo area and an abandoned 2-year-old boy standing next to an adult survivor who was lying on the pavement.
The heart-rending scene unfolded Monday morning in the southern state of Veracruz after the driver stopped the truck on a two-lane road and allowed more than 100 migrants, most from Central American, to walk out of the freight container.
The survivors told National Institute of Migration agents that they were forced to bang on the doors to be released when they could no longer bear the lack of air and high temperature inside the locked trailer.
The driver or his companion opened the door, and most of the migrants jumped out and ran off into heavy vegetation on the side of the highway that connects Ocozocoautla, Chiapas with Las Choapas, Veracruz.
The name or nationality of the migrant who suffocated to death was not disclosed by the National Institute of Migration.
He and the passenger fled the scene and had not been located as of Tuesday.
The migrants told immigration agents that most of the individuals were beginning to faint due to the the lack of air and extreme heat several hours before the tractor-trailer had come to a full stop.
While the majority of the migrants who signed up from the clandestine trip to the U.S. escaped, a total of eight migrants were found either lying on the ground or standing near the truck.
None of the seven adults identified themselves as family members of the boy, who is apparently from Guatemala.
The Mexican Secretariat for Home Affairs said that the child was placed in custody of the State Attorney for the Protection of Girls, Boys and Adolescents.
The adult migrants were transported to a local National Institute of Migration center where they were provided additional treatment.
The incident comes less than a week after 240 migrants, including 61 children, bound for the United States border for found inside a warehouse in the central Mexico state of Puebla.
The United States-Mexico border region, which covers 1,954 miles, has become a pressing issue for the administration of President Joe Biden. The administration has struggled with a rise in unlawful border crossers.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who was chosen by Biden to lead the nation's efforts in finding a solution to the migrant crisis, inspected the border area in El Paso, Texas, last Friday.
Harris had been criticized by Republican politicians and some Democrats for not visiting the border sooner.
Immigration 'cannot be reduced to a political issue,' Harris told reporters. 'We're talking about children, we're talking about families, we're talking about suffering. And our approach has to be thoughtful and effective.'
A monthly report released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection earlier this month showed that Border Patrol agents stopped 180,034 migrants in May along the southwestern border, a slight increase from 178,854 the prior month, with the increase driven largely by single adults.
From March to May more than 530,000 people were apprehended and pushed back into Mexico after attempting to cross without legal immigration documents, the June 10 report also indicated.
