Mexico Uses X-Ray in Its Crackdown on Illegal Immigrants Entering Country

Mexico is using a variety of resources as it steps up its immigration enforcement after a deal brokered with the United States to avoid tariffs — including a giant X-ray.

While the Mexican National Guard deploys to places like Tapachula on the country’s southern border and makes changes to its asylum protocol, agents with the country’s National Migration Institute (INM) are using an X-ray to find migrants being smuggled into the country in trucks.

Mexican officials say they caught more than 200 migrants hidden in trucks the last two days, using X-rays to see the people hidden inside. The Mexican security ministry also said it found 228 migrants in a routine search of a soft drink transportation truck in one of its southern states on Monday.

The INM’s new leader, former prisons chief Francisco Garduno, has overseen several high-profile busts of commercial vehicles smuggling migrants, including 800 people in four trucks the weekend he took over.

The Mexican authorities primarily capture migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, many of which are minors. They attempt to travel through Mexico to the United States southern border, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported nearly 133,000 arrests in May.

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For its part, Mexico is putting its resources into stopping the flow from Central America. Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said the attorney general’s office has about 11 open investigations into migrant smugglers.

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