MEXICO CITY: Eight Chinese migrants were found dead on the coast of southern Mexico, reportedly after their boat capsized along a popular, but perilous route for illegally entering the United States, CNN reported citing authorities on Monday.
The bodies of the seven women and one man were discovered Friday on a beach in San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca, the state’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Treacherous boat rides up the coast of Mexico are often used by migrants hoping to cross into the US in an attempt to bypass checkpoints on closely monitored land routes, CNN reported.
The Oaxaca prosecutor’s office said the migrants had travelled on a boat operated by a Mexican man, which set off Thursday from Tapachula, Chiapas State, near the Guatemala border. One Chinese man survived the trip, the statement said. It did not explain what happened to the boat’s operator.
The prosecutor’s office said it was working with federal agencies to investigate the incident and the Chinese embassy in Mexico to identify the bodies.
According to the CNN report, the number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the US from Mexico has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2023, more than 37,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, US government data shows, compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade.
And though still dwarfed in number by migrants from regional neighbours like Mexico, Venezuela and Guatemala, Chinese people are on track to be the fastest-growing group making those crossings, according to a CNN analysis of the latest law enforcement data.
A Chinese migrant who arrived in the US via the ocean route in late 2022 previously told CNN that her boat almost capsized at sea after departing from Tapachula under the cover of darkness.
“I took a boat at night, went through big waves, and then it was very bumpy, I was almost thrown out of the boat”, she said in an interview last year. “At that moment, I was very, very scared … I was thinking, if the boat had capsized then and I had died at sea, would anyone know? Would they tell my family?”
The influx of Chinese migrants spotlights the urgency many now feel to leave their homeland, even amid what Chinese President Xi Jinping has claimed is a “national rejuvenation”. Many Chinese who left the country point to a struggle to survive, as reported by CNN.
Three years of Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions left people across China out of work and disillusioned with the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly tight grip on all aspects of life under Xi. Hope that business would fully rebound once restrictions ended a year ago has vanished, with China’s once envious economic growth stuttering.
Other migrants nod to restrictions on personal life in China, where Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown on free speech, civil society and religion in the country of 1.4 billion, CNN reported. (ANI)