This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Two teenage members of the migrant caravan have reportedly been murdered in Tijuana, a stark reminder of the dangers facing the tens of thousands of young Central Americans who try to reach the United States each year.

The Honduran victims, aged 16 and 17, reportedly hailed from the violence-stricken city of San Pedro Sula, where the caravan set out from in mid-October before cutting north-west through Mexico towards the US border.

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They had been staying at a shelter for underage migrants in the Mexican border city and were killed after leaving that refuge on Saturday night. Their bodies were found dumped in the early hours of last Sunday, according to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada which said the boys had been strangled.

Authorities in Baja California state said on Wednesday that two men and a woman had been arrested on suspicion of murder and other charges.

Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, widely known as Amlo, described the deaths as regrettable.

Asked what Mexico was doing to protect such migrants, López Obrador told reporters that his country needed a migration policy rooted in “the defense and protection of human rights”.

Honduras’s foreign ministry urged Mexican authorities to protect a third citizen who survived the incident but suffered “severe injuries”. That man’s life was still in danger as a result of his knowledge of the crime, the ministry said in a statement.

The deaths are the first reported murders of members of the migrant caravan although La Jornada said two other Hondurans had died on route to the US: one of an overdose and another who was run over.

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Their deaths highlight not only the treacherous pilgrimage thousands of children and teenagers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala make to the US each year but also the dangers they continue to face even after reaching the border. Minors often find themselves trapped in cities such as Tijuana as a result of bureaucratic hurdles being erected by US authorities.

Speaking after the US and Mexico unveiled a development initiative for Central America, López Obrador said investment was the key to slowing “forced migration”.

“People don’t leave their communities, their villages, their families, because they want to – they do it out of necessity,” the president told reporters.

“Migration has always existed – ever since the most remote times of world history. But this migration should be optional, not obligatory, not forced.”