Eight Chinese migrants found dead on Mexico beach after boat capsizes

CNN :
Eight Chinese migrants have been found dead on the coast of southern Mexico, authorities said, after their boat capsized along a popular but perilous route for illegally entering the United States.
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.
The Oaxaca prosecutor’s office said the migrants had traveled 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.
CNN has reached out to the Chinese embassy in Mexico for comment.
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 neighbors like Mexico, Venezuela and Guatemala, Chinese people are on track to be the fastest growing group making those crossings, according to a CNN analysis earlier this year of law enforcement data.
A Chinese migrant who arrived in the US via the ocean route in late 2022 told CNN that her boat almost capsized at sea after departing from Tapachula under the cover of darkness.
Iris Wang, 35, said she chose to take the boat to reach Oaxaca instead of the bus to avoid running into police on the road, without fully anticipating the danger.
“Those few hours were a nightmare that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. It was too terrifying,” she said.