MEXICO CITY – Mexican federal agents intercepted two vehicles transporting a total of 191 migrants from Central and South America in “inhumane conditions,” with no water or food, Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) officials said Thursday.

The migrants – including 181 Guatemalans, nine Hondurans and one Brazilian woman – will be able to request asylum in Mexico, although if that is not granted they will be returned to their home countries.

One of the vehicles – a bus intercepted in the central Mexican state of Hidalgo – was carrying 88 people “in overcrowded and poorly ventilated conditions,” said the INM in a press release.

The second vehicle, a truck, was stopped in the eastern state of Veracruz while transporting 103 people, including 55 minors.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants each year attempt to reach the US illegally across Mexico, a journey on which many of them are robbed, extorted, kidnapped, abused or even murdered by criminal organizations, as well as by corrupt authorities.