ABOUT 200 Central American migrants in Mexico who were planning to take part in a demonstration were hemmed in by immigration checkpoints on Saturday.

For several years, migrants have taken part in protest marches around Easter week to highlight their suffering at the hands of criminals and corrupt police.

But Catholic priest Alejandro Solalinde, who runs a shelter for migrants, said at the weekend that authorities had threatened to arrest on human-trafficking charges the owners of buses hired to take the protesters from the town of Ixtepec in Oaxaca state to the capital Mexico City.

Almost 200 distressed migrants were stranded at the shelter in Ixtepec because they were afraid of being detained at immigration checkpoints set up near the town, leaving Mr Solalinde and his volunteers to feed and house about 420 people.

He called the situation “critical,” saying: “I’ve never seen a city under siege like this.”