(Q CENTRAL AMERICA) Mexico’s southern border region is a hot spot for sex traffickers who target migrants traveling from Central America.
Thirty-five women were rescued from a sex-trafficking ring, with six suspects arrested in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, authorities announced Wednesday.
According to the National Security Commission, a special team of Federal Police units, as well as agents from the state attorney general’s office freed the victims from five different bars in the town of Motozintla where the sex trafficking occurred.
Police also arrested the managers of the five clubs, including four women and two men, for their role in the crime.
The town of Motozintla lies along Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, an area that is renown as being a hub for female trafficking. Migrants from Central America trying to make their way through Mexico are particularly vulnerable to being picked up by traffickers.
Recent statistics by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show 89 percent of sex trafficking victims in southern Mexico are from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras.
Typically they are fleeing situations of gang violence and high unemployment in their countries. According to the UNODC, sexual exploitation has become so common along the Mexico-Guatemala border region that territorial organized crime groups have also gotten involved.
Authorities say the Zetas, one of Mexico’s most dangerous cartels, has been implicated in exploitation crimes in the area.
This content was originally published by teleSUR.
