A boat capsizes and eight Chinese refugees are discovered dead on a beach near Mexico

According to authorities, eight Chinese migrants were discovered dead on the southern Mexican coast after their boat overturned on a well-traveled but dangerous path used to enter the country illegally.

According to a statement from the state’s prosecutor’s office, the bodies of the seven women and one man were found on a beach in San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca, on Friday.

In an effort to get around checkpoints on highly watched land routes, migrants attempting to enter the US frequently take risky boat trips up the Mexican coast.

The migrants left Tapachula, Chiapas state, close to the Guatemalan border on Thursday in a boat captained by a Mexican man, according to the prosecutor’s office in Oaxaca. The statement stated that one Chinese man made it through the trip. What happened to the boat’s operator was not explained by it.

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In order to identify the bodies, the Chinese embassy in Mexico is collaborating with the prosecutor’s office and federal agencies on the incident’s investigation.

CNN has reached out to the Chinese embassy in Mexico for comment.

The number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the US from Mexico has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2023, more than 37,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, US government data shows – compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade.

And though still dwarfed in number by migrants from regional neighbors like Mexico, Venezuela and Guatemala, Chinese people are on track to be the fastest growing group making those crossings, according to a CNN analysis of the latest law enforcement data.

A Chinese immigrant who traveled by water to reach the US in late 2022 told CNN that, having left Tapachula in the dark, her boat nearly sank at sea.

Iris Wang, 35, claimed that she did not fully anticipate the risk when she decided to use the boat rather than the bus to get to Oaxaca in order to avoid seeing authorities on the road.

“Those few hours were a nightmare that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. It was too terrifying,” she said.