Desperate lives packed into a tractor trailer

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The ghostly image above is an X-ray image taken by Mexican authorities who discovered 513 migrants stuffed into two tractor trailer trucks in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas last Tuesday.   In the X-ray, you can see how some migrants were standing, holding on to ropes so others could fill the floors.  More than 400 of the migrants were from Guatemala.  Of the others, 47 were from El Salvador.

The migrants said they paid $7000 each for the trip.  Four of the human smugglers were captured.

This case provides another example of the desperation pushing Central American migrants out of their countries towards the north.    Despite the well-publicized dangers of the journey, hundreds and thousands try to travel illegally through Mexico and into the US.   A report in La Prensa Grafica states that 500,000 undocumented Central American migrants pass through the Mexican state of Chiapas each year.