Thousands of migrants board trucks in Mexico each year in the hope of reaching the U.S. border and building a new life. Some of those journeys end in tragedy. A cross-border team of investigative journalists in Latin America, Europe and the United States collaborated for seven months on a database that gives a glimpse into dangerous and deadly human smuggling.
Data journalists reviewed public records, news coverage and reports by an advocacy group to create the database documenting nearly 19,000 migrants’ journeys through Mexico. This attempt by reporters to map events across six years and the routes taken by the trucks is unprecedented. Some migrants’ journeys start in the Mexican state of Chiapas on the country’s southern border with Guatemala, and others make it as far as the state of Tamaulipas on the border with Texas. ICIJ helped fact-check the data.
The events listed in the database cover the years 2018 to 2023 and reveal only a fraction of cases, since most of the smuggling remains undetected. The team documented 172 cargo vehicles, most of which were pulling trailers — with no ventilation system — containing anywhere from a few to hundreds of migrants, traveling for days on end in unsafe and overcrowded conditions and sometimes scorching temperatures. The migrants who were found by authorities through routine inspections or because the cargo vehicle was abandoned by the side of the road by the smugglers reported agonizing and inhumane conditions. ICIJ and its media partners documented at least 111 deaths, with hundreds more injured.
This article is part of “Cargo trucks: a trap for migrants,” a reporting collaboration led by Noticias Telemundo and the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Bellingcat. Pie de Página and its partners Chiapas Paralelo and En un 2×3 Tamaulipas reported in Mexico, Plaza Pública in Guatemala and Contracorriente in Honduras.
You can read the full story in an article by Jesús Escudero, Brenda Medina, Delphine Reuter, Ronny Rojas, Pablo Medina Uribe and Marión Briancesco published in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist’s web ste at: http://bit.ly/4bjb3wd,