Mexican National Guard Kills 2 Colombians, Wounds 4 On Migrant Smuggling Route Near US

MEXICO. Mexico’s National Guard has shot and killed two Colombians and wounded four others in what the Defense Department says is a clash near the US border.

Colombia’s foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that all the victims were migrants who were “caught in the crossfire.” The dead were a 20-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, and the number of injured Colombians was five, not four. There is no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

Mexico’s Defense Ministry, which oversees the National Guard, did not respond to requests for comment Monday on whether the victims were migrants, but said one Colombian man who was not injured in the shooting had been handed over to immigration officials, assuming they were.

If they were migrants, it would be the second time in just over a month that the military in Mexico has opened fire on and killed migrants.

On October 1, the day President Claudia Sheinbaum took office, soldiers opened fire on a truck, killing six migrants in the southern state of Chiapas. An 11-year-old girl from Egypt, her 18-year-old sister and a 17-year-old boy from El Salvador were killed in the shooting, as well as people from Peru and Honduras.

The latest shooting happened Saturday on a dirt road near Tecate, east of Otay Mesa on the California border, which is often used by Mexican migrant smugglers, the department said in a statement late Sunday.

The Defense Ministry said a paramilitary National Guard patrol came under fire after spotting two trucks in an area near an unofficial border crossing and a wind farm known as La Rumorosa.

One truck sped up and ran away. The National Guard opened fire on another truck, killing two Colombians and wounding four others. There was no update on their condition, nor were there any reports of casualties among the Guardsmen involved.

One Colombian and one Mexican national were found and arrested unharmed at the scene, and the departments said officers recovered a handgun and several magazines typically used for assault rifles at the scene.

Colombians have sometimes been recruited as fighters for Mexican drug cartels, which are also active in migrant smuggling. But the fact that the survivor was handed over to immigration authorities and that the Department of Foreign Affairs contacted the Colombian consulate indicates that they were migrants.

Cartel fighters sometimes escort or kidnap migrants heading for the US border. One possible scenario was that armed migrant smugglers could be in one or both trucks, but the migrants were mostly unarmed bystanders.

The Ministry of Defense reported that three National Guard officers who opened fire were removed from duty.

Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office on September 30, gave the military an unprecedented role in public life and law enforcement; he created a militarized Guard and used a joint military force as the country’s main law enforcement agency, replacing the police. Since then, the Guard has been placed under the control of the army.

But critics say the military is not trained to do civilian law enforcement work. Moreover, the one-sided death toll in such confrontations—in which all the dead and wounded are on one side—raises activists’ suspicions about whether there really was a confrontation.

For example, the soldiers who opened fire in Chiapas — who have been detained pending charges — claimed to have heard “detonations” before opening fire. There were no signs of a weapon at the scene.

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