<p>MEXICO CITY — Police in southern Mexico said Wednesday they stopped two passenger buses loaded with a total of 210 Central American migrants, a mass-smuggling tactic that had largely fallen into disuse after a government crackdown in 2014. </p>
<p>Federal prosecutors said eight suspected immigrant traffickers were detained aboard the buses in the southern state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala. </p>
<p>The vehicles were detected when they stopped at a toll booth, and the passengers could not show legal travel documents. Most of the migrants, 178, were from Guatemala. </p>
<p>In 2014, the government set up a series of checkpoints in southern Mexico to stop, board and inspect passenger buses. </p>
<p>After that, immigrant traffickers turned to cramming migrants into windowless truck freight containers, often hiding them under false cargo loads, or installing platforms to carry migrants stacked above each other. </p>
<p>During the migrant caravans of 2018 and 2019, Mexican authorities briefly tolerated the movement of migrants and in a few cases provided buses to avoid having them hop freight trucks.</p>
