Police in Mexico's southern Chiapas state have found 513 migrants inside two trailer trucks bound for the US, and said they had been transported in dangerously crowded conditions.

Some of the immigrants were suffering from dehydration after travelling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright and to allow more migrants to be more crammed in on the floor.

The trucks had air holes punched in the tops of the containers, but migrants interviewed at the state prosecutors' office said they lacked air and water. The trucks were bound for the central city of Puebla, where the migrants said they had been told they would be loaded onto a second set of vehicles for the trip to the US border.

"We were suffering, it was very hot and we were clinging to the ropes," said Mario, a 23-year-old Honduran migrant who identified himself only by his first name. Mexico's national human rights commission says thousands of undocumented migrants are kidnapped and held for ransom by drug gangs in Mexico each year.

None of the migrants would say whether any drug gangs had been involved in the mass smuggling scheme broken up early Tuesday when Chiapas state police discovered the migrants while using x-ray equipment on the trucks at a checkpoint in the outskirts of city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

The migrants said the smugglers were charging them about $7,000 (£4,303) apiece to get them into the US. A Guatemalan migrant who identified himself as Juan said remaining in his hometown in Guatemala was not an option. "A lot of us are Indians, and we can't stay in our homes. There is no work, and there's nothing to eat," he said.

(Source)