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If the involvement of law enforcement officials is confirmed, the case would echo the abduction and apparent massacre of 43 student teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala in 2014 by corrupt police working with a drug gang.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to put an end to killings and kidnappings by authorities, but ties between security forces and organized crime have been hard to stamp out.
The two Guatemalan migrants were identified after their Maya indigenous relatives gave DNA samples to help investigators.
More than a dozen of the victims are believed to be from Guatemala’s highlands, a region hard hit by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and by extreme weather last year.
Also among the dead was the Mexican owner of one of the burnt-out pickup trucks found at the scene, prosecutors said. The truck had been impounded weeks before during the detention of 66 migrants in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon, but was later released to the owner, identified only as Jesus M.
Daniel P., another of the Mexican victims, was a known migrant smuggler, prosecutors said.
The attack took place in a rural area along the busiest stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border for illegal crossings.
Every year tens of thousands of migrants, many from Central America, move through the region under the watch of guides who pay cartels for permission to transit. The lucrative routes are disputed by splinters of the Gulf Cartel and feared Zetas gang.
Investigators believe the victims were part of a larger convoy that included other vehicles carrying migrants, including Salvadorans, and another with armed men aboard apparently for protection.
The detained police appeared to have altered the scene of the crime, removing ammunition casings, prosecutors said. The police report and information the suspects gave in interviews did not match phone records and location data, they added.
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