Three people dead, four missing as smuggling boat sinks in Mexico

At least three Honduran migrants died and four were missing on Monday after a people-smuggling boat capsized in eastern Mexico, authorities said.

Several others survived the accident in Agua Dulce in Veracruz state, where the Tonala river flows into the Gulf of Mexico, according to an official.

“They retrieved three bodies. The four survivors report that there are four missing,” Agua Dulce civil protection chief David Esparza Diaz told AFP.

Many thousands of migrants cross Mexico each year on a journey during which they face multiple dangers, including road accidents, drowning and crime.

The National Migration Institute said Monday that a 36-year-old Salvadoran and his seven-year-old son had died last week while crossing a river between Mexico and Guatemala.

On Saturday, four migrants died and another 16 were injured in a road accident in the southeastern state of Chiapas, authorities said.

Last week, the bodies of five migrants suspected to have died of dehydration and heat stroke were found in a railroad car in northern Mexico near the U.S. border.

U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped migrants entering the country unlawfully nearly 202,000 times along the southern border in April, a 4% drop from March, recent government figures show.

While it is a slight decrease from the 209,906 Border Patrol apprehensions recorded in March, April’s tally shows that migrant arrests along the border with Mexico remained at a 22-year high, according to historical agency data.

On Friday,  a federal judge in Louisiana ruled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot move forward with a plan to discontinue pandemic-related emergency rules, known as Title 42, that allow U.S. border agents to rapidly expel migrants to Mexico or their home countries on public health grounds.