Mexican officials push migrants away from border-bound cargo trains

23/9/2023 13:30

        Several dozen migrants retreated in frustration from train tracks outside Mexico City on Friday, blocked by Mexican officials from hitching rides on cargo wagons in a major new enforcement effort to curb the flow of people headed north.
        
        Thousands of people have reached the northern border in recent days and crossed into the United States, many after taking dangerous journeys on freight trains known as "The Beast."
        
        Mexican railroad operator Ferromex this week suspended 60 trains due to the influx of people, and Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) has deployed agents to dissuade people from climbing aboard.
        
        At a railway alongside a trash dump in Huehuetoca, a town north of Mexico City, some 40 INM agents in more than a dozen vans drove alongside the tracks to cut off access to migrants, and sent up a drone to locate others who had scrambled into the surrounding hills.