Mexico arrests around 240,000 illegal migrants in 2005

Mexico arrested around 240,269 undocumented migrants in 2005, nearly 11.39 percent more than a year earlier and 74 percent more than three years earlier, the country's National Migration Agency (INM) said in a statement on Sunday.

The INM said 89 percent of the illegal migrants were from central America, with nearly 101,000 from Guatemala, 78,326 from Honduras and nearly 42,700 from El Salvador.

The remaining 18,320 or so included nationals of Brazil, Venezuela and other more distant places like China.

The INM said the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, saw the most arrests, with nearly 104,000 in 2005. Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico was next in line with around 25,600 and Tabasco, on the Caribbean coast, saw nearly 21,000 arrests.

The document said that Mexico has set up seven new detention centers across the country to deal with the rising number of arrests.

Source: Xinhua