A migrant’s foot was ripped off after he tried to hop on a Mexican train headed toward the U.S. border, and fell under one of the train’s wheels.
A migrant from El Salvador was critically injured Friday when he tried to catch a free ride in the southern Mexican town of Chahuites, according to the Washington Examiner. Unfortunately for the man, he immediately fell down and was run over, losing his right foot.
The migrant, who is reportedly around 40 years of age, was transported to a nearby hospital immediately following the accident.
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He is not the first to be injured by that type of train. “La Bestia,” Spanish for “The Beast,” is a nickname given to a network of Mexican freight trains that travel northward from the Mexico-Guatemala border. As the name suggest, numerous Central American migrants have been mutilated in accidents involving these trains.
The Migration Policy Institute in 2014 estimated that around 500,000 Central Americans boarded the “La Bestia” trains annually in their attempts to reach the U.S. That same year, the Mexican government officially barred people from climbing aboard them.
“We ride ‘The Beast’ because we do not have money, we have been asking for coins from town to town, we have been fleeing from violence. We did not go out for pleasure, but out of necessity,” one migrant said to La Jornada, a Mexico City-based newspaper. “We know that there are risks and it shows what happened with our Salvadoran brother.”
Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Juchitan, Oaxaca are pictured atop a train known as “The Beast” while continuing their journey toward the United States, in Mexico April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jose de Jesus Cortes
News of the horrific accident comes as an increasing number of Central American migrants — many of them families and unaccompanied minors — are arriving at the U.S. southern border. For the those who do not pay for safe transportation across Mexico, dangerous routes through deserts and rivers must be crossed in order to make into the interior of the U.S. (RELATED: Guatemalan Teen Reportedly Died While In Border Patrol Custody)
“We have had 2,500 rescues this year,” Border Patrol Law Enforcement Operations Chief Brian Hastings revealed on Friday. “About 400 of those are water rescues where agents have put their own lives on the line, jumped into a fast-moving current to save children, or to save adults, or to save those that are in distress, and that’s on a daily basis.”
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