Plan International calls to ensure the necessary preventive policies in the wake of the deaths of 53 migrants in Texas, United States

From 2014 to date, nearly 3,000 people have died or disappeared attempting to cross the border from Mexico into the United States.

So far 53 migrants have been found dead in an abandoned truck in San Antonio, Texas. Among them, at least 27 people from Mexico, 14 from Honduras and seven from Guatemala have been identified, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Migration. Due to the tightening of migration policies, people on the move are experiencing increasing danger in transit to the United States, especially children and adolescents.

We call on the governments of the region not only to ensure that this incident is clarified and those responsible are brought to justice, but also to implement migration policies that guarantee the protection of people in a situation of mobility and thus avoid events such as the one that occurred this week in San Antonio. We also call on the governments of the countries of origin of migrants to implement effective public policies that address the structural causes of migration.

We are responding to a migration crisis that has already claimed 293 lives in the first six months of this year alone, according to the United Nations. The Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has stated that since 2014 nearly 3,000 people have been reported missing or dead trying to cross the border from Mexico to the United States. So far in 2022, more than one million migrants have been identified at the southwest border; of which 100,336 were unaccompanied children.

From our organization, in Central America and Mexico, we strive every day, so that those who have made the decision to migrate do so safely by providing them with key information, food kits to cover their basic needs, as well as information about their rights, about protection mechanisms and safe points where to seek support. All this, through the Camino Protegido Program, an initiative implemented by Plan International together with ChildFund, EDUCO and local partners, and with our teams in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.