Hundreds of migrants found in clandestine camp in southern Mexico

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Hundreds of migrants were found in a clandestine camp in southern Mexico, authorities said on Friday, after U.S. and Mexican authorities implemented new policies aimed at stemming the illegal flow of migrants into the United States.

Members of the National Guard found 368 migrants during a patrol in a municipality of Tecpatan, in a mountainous area in the southern state of Chiapas, close to the border with Guatemala.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) said the group included 217 from Guatemala, 85 from Nicaragua, 45 from Ecuador, 11 from Honduras, seven from El Salvador and three from Cuba.

The migrants were transferred to official agencies to decide their legal status, the INM said in a statement. It did not say when the operation took place.

U.S. authorities last month had announced a plan, agreed to with Mexico, to return migrants who enter the U.S. illegally to Mexico. Earlier this week, however, a U.S. judge ruled unlawful the pandemic-era order, known as Title 42, used to expel migrants to Mexico.

Guatemalan authorities said on Friday that 31,315 of their citizens were repatriated this year under Title 42.

Thousands of migrants have been found camping in poor conditions elsewhere in Mexico. In Oaxaca state, about 12,000 people, largely from Venezuela, were found sleeping on wooden crates, on sidewalks, and in residents’ houses and backyards.

(Reporting by Raúl Cortés Fernández and Carolina Pulice; Additional reporting by Lizbeth Díaz; Editing by Leslie Adler)