On December 9, 2021, a traffic accident occurred in the Mexican state of Chiapas when a freight truck smuggling over 180 migrants overturned and hit a bridge.

Survivor Celso Pacheco, a Guatemalan migrant, stated that the truck seemed to have lost control under the weight of its human cargo.

[6] Rescue workers who first arrived on the scene remarked that they had witnessed migrants who had been in the trailer fleeing the crash, fearing being detained by immigration agents and subsequently deported.

[4] Many of the victims had paid ten to twelve thousand dollars to be smuggled to the Mexico–United States border, and now face deportation to their home countries.

[4][12] Shortly after hearing the news, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tweeted that the crash was "very painful" and that he "deeply regrets the tragedy".

[4] Mexico’s National Immigration Institute stated that it would offer lodging and humanitarian visas to the survivors and that the authorities would help identify the dead and cover funeral expenses or repatriation of their remains to their home countries.