According to reports, Mexican authorities are investigating after a burned truck was discovered in a region near the U.S. border that contained more than a dozen bodies.
Reuters reported on Sunday that the truck was discovered in an uninhabited part of Tamaulipas in the northeast of the country. Nineteen bodies were discovered in total. A motive and the identity of the victims have not yet been determined.
“Preliminary investigations indicate that the cause of death was gunfire and that the bodies were then burned,” a statement from authorities in the region read, according to Reuters.
“One of the lines of investigation is that the facts could have happened in a different place than the discovery,” he continued.
The area of Tamaulipas where the truck was discovered is known to be an access point for cartel activities and immigrant trafficking.
Migrants traveling north in hopes of entering the United States face violence in the region for years, exacerbated in part by the Trump administration’s so-called “stay in Mexico” policy. .
A United Nations migration monitoring project in Central and South America recorded nearly 500 deaths among migrant populations in regions near the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019.