Police in Nicaragua have rescued 15 Bangladeshi migrants, who were wandering lost on a highway after their smugglers, according to local media reports, abandoned them.
The men, aged between 18 and 33, were found on the highway El Crucero at San Rafael del Sur town in Managua, Commissioner Leonidas Roque told the media on Thursday.
He said the migrants, all of them disoriented after three days of walking, were being taken from Costa Rica to Honduras, according to a New York Times report.
It said that route would have taken them across Nicaragua on their way to the United States.
Roque, the deputy chief of police in San Rafael del Sur, said police spotted the Bangladeshi migrants as they were walking in file.
Quoting one of the migrants named ‘Ali’, he said ‘a coyote’, someone who smuggles illegal immigrants into the US, had robbed them and then left them stranded.
The men then walked to Managua from the Costa Rican border, Roque said.
According to Ali, the only Bangladeshi who spoke some Spanish, police rescued them three days after they entered Nicaraguan territory through the blind spots in the country’s southern border, reported the El Nuevo Diario newspaper.
He said they had ‘left Bangladesh because of political problems’ and their final destination was the US.
Before abandoning them, the trafficker had charged them between $100 and $500 each promising to take them to Honduras, Ali told the newspaper.
After rescuing them, police took the Bangladeshis to a health centre in San Rafael del Sur, where examinations revealed all of them were suffering from dehydration.
Medical authorities stated they were also having stomach trouble and their joints were aching after walking long distances, said the El Nuevo Diario report.
They were later taken to an immigrant shelter in Managua, supervised by the Nicaraguan Directorate of Immigration.
Source: Bd news24