MEXICO CITY — The Mexican authorities are investigating the death of a teenage migrant from El Salvador who was shot and killed after the truck she was in ran a government checkpoint.
Witnesses have told investigators in the state of Veracruz, where the shooting happened last Friday, that a truck carrying the 19-year-old woman and other migrants bound for the United States border passed through a checkpoint and that people wearing police uniforms shot at the vehicle, said Jorge Winckler Ortiz, the attorney general of Veracruz.
Two other migrants in the truck were wounded in the shooting, officials said.
The incident occurred amid a Mexican government deployment of security forces to assert greater control of migration toward the United States, part of a deal that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador struck with President Trump earlier this month to fend off a threat of tariffs.
The suggestion that the Mexican police may have killed the teenager has underscored the fears of migrants’ advocates and human rights experts, who worry that the security forces, being rushed into migration control, are ill-prepared for the task.
“This would be the first person killed by the plan to contain migration,” said Ruben Figueroa, an activist with the migrant rights’ group Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano, in a Twitter post.
“The hunting of migrants on the southern border is intensifying,” he wrote in a separate tweet.
Mexico’s security secretary, Alfonso Durazo, has also confirmed that his ministry was investigating the shooting.
In a news conference this week, Mr. Winckler said that according to testimony from witnesses, 17 migrants from El Salvador were traveling in a four-door pickup truck through the state of Veracruz when they encountered the checkpoint.
The driver slowed down as he passed through the checkpoint, but hearing sirens, he sped away. A high-speed chase ensued, lasting 20 minutes, Mr. Winckler said, according to the preliminary investigation based on interviews with witnesses.
After shots were fired from the police vehicle, the truck pulled to a stop and three men “dressed as police,” stepped out of the police vehicle, Mr. Winckler recounted.
His language allowed for the possibility that the assailants were not legitimate police officers. In Mexico, criminals have been known to disguise themselves in the uniforms of the nation’s security forces to conduct crimes, though corruption also permeates Mexico’s police forces.
As the three men beat up the driver of the truck, the other migrants ran away. The men in police uniforms hauled the driver away, leaving behind the dead migrant and her two wounded companions, one of whom had been shot in a hand and the other in his leg, Mr. Winckler said, citing witness testimony.
One of the wounded migrants told The Washington Post that the occupants of the patrol car had first shot at the migrants’ vehicle from behind, before pulling ahead and shooting through the windshield. The wounded migrant, who was recovering in a hospital in Veracruz, said he saw all three men wielding weapons.
Source : Nytimes
