A Mexican firm has been forced to stop sending its freight trains north to the U.S. border because of migrants hitching rides in a mass migration crisis.
For the first time, Ferromex has suspended 60 routes headed north because migrants riding the freight trains have been injured or even killed, NBC News reported Wednesday.
The mass migration using Ferromex trains is "unprecedented," parent company Grupo Mexico told NBC News.
"The accumulation of migrants in recent days has increased significantly," Ferromex wrote in a statement, according to the report.
Halting the trains is intended to "avoid accidents or loss of life," it added, as incidents of injuries and death have become more prevalent amid the surge.
Ferromex is the largest freight train operation in Mexico, using more than 6,200 miles of track in the country, according to the report.
A single train might be carrying as many as 1,000 hitchhiking migrants, and one train recently was transporting as many as 1,500, according to NBC News.
As the summer heat gives way, making migration less dangerous, there has been a resurgence of would-be incomers at the southern border, with more than 7,500 apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol on Sunday alone, two Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC.