SEATTLE - One migrant was killed and eight others were wounded in a shooting near the Mexican town of Tubutama, about 47 miles south of Sasabe, near the Arizona border.
Authorities say unidentified assailants opened fire on a vehicle in which migrants were traveling, leaving a boy from southern Mexico dead. The wounded included migrants from Mexico, Ecuador and Africa, officials said.
No motive was given for the attack, but the area has been hit by violence between competing gangs of migrant smugglers allied with drug cartels.
According to data from the United Nations' Office on Drugs and Crime, criminal organizations generate an annual income of about $6.6 billion dollars from smuggling migrants into the United States each year.
Cartels in Mexico frequently take advantage of migrants, demanding money from smugglers moving groups through their territories and will sometimes attack them if the payments are not made.
Migrants smuggled across the border between Mexico and the United States pay about $2,000, while migrants from beyond Mexico could pay as much as $10,000.
Last September, two Mexican migrants were shot to death on the Mexican side of the U.S. border. In another notable case, in 2021, Tamaulipas state police shot and killed 19 people on the border, including at least 14 Guatemalan migrants, then burned their bodies. A court convicted 11 of the officers officers of homicide.
According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), there have been 164 migrant deaths reported in the El Paso region alone since Oct. 1 of last year. The migrant fatalities in the region are up by 18.5 percent since July 25 and have now surpassed last year's total death toll of 149.
In the Arizona border, Humane Border's data on deceased migrants revealed that there has been more than 4,100 sets of remains discovered in Southern Arizona since 1990, including 95 reported so far this year.
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