MEXICO CITY (NEWSnet/AP) — Authorities found 123 Central and South American migrants trapped in a trailer in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico’s immigration agency said Thursday.

Officials from the state attorney general’s office found the migrants in Matehuala, a city on the border of Nuevo Leon, on Wednesday after a resident reported hearing cries for help from a locked trailer box.

The majority of migrants rescued are from the Central American nations of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, as well as four from Ecuador and one Cuban, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.

The immigration agency did not say how the migrants came to be stuck there nor where they were heading, but such groups of migrants typically hope to reach the United States.

The same day, police in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, arrested three alleged human smugglers after finding 11 Guatemalan migrants trapped in a house, according to the Chihuahua state security department.

Chihuahua’s Attorney General has opened an investigation into the suspects.

Both the U.S. and Mexico’s southern borders have faced ever larger numbers of migrants traveling north this year. More than 400,000 have crossed Darien Gap from Colombia in Panama in 2023,  according to Panama government data, up from 250,000 in 2022.

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