EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican authorities early Tuesday rescued four migrants who spent the night lost in the desert south of Juarez.
The migrants were part of a group of 10 walking along the Pan-American Highway from Chihuahua City to Juarez on Monday afternoon. The group scattered into the desert in an area known as the Dunes of Samalayuca upon seeing a Mexican immigration patrol approach, first responders told a Border Report camera crew.
Six migrants emerged a short time later but three Venezuelan males and a Colombian female remained missing. Juarez police received a 911 call, presumably from the missing migrants, and the Chihuahua state police initiated a search that included a helicopter overflying the dunes, state authorities said.
The search was suspended due to darkness but resumed Tuesday morning. Paramedics rendered first aid once the migrants were found and an ambulance transported them to a Juarez hospital for further evaluation, authorities at the scene said.
State police said in a statement that the migrants were being treated for dehydration.
The Pan American Highway, or Mexico Federal Highway 45, has become a transit point for migrants taken off commercial trains headed from the interior of Mexico to the border. It’s a dangerous place that last month claimed the lives of two migrants when a vehicle swerved to a avoid families walking on the asphalt, overturned and struck another group farther down the road.
(ProVideo in Samalayuca, Mexico, contributed to this story.)
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