E/CN.4/2003/85/Add.2 page 15 ill-treated physically, mentally and verbally, poorly fed, subjected to sexual abuse and harassment, threatened with being reported to the migration authorities for having no papers or unjustifiably dismissed. 44. A third group of particularly vulnerable migrants is made up of women working voluntarily, or being forced to work, in the sex trade. These women, most of whom are of Guatemalan, Salvadoran or Honduran origin, are subjected to serious levels of abuse, sexual exploitation in nightclubs, extortion and violence. These are young women, many of them illiterate, who stay temporarily in the south of Mexico in order to save sufficient money to continue their journey to the United States. The abuses most commonly suffered by these women are ill-treatment and extortion by certain officials, sexual abuse by police officers in exchange for not being deported, conditions of servitude, violence by employers and clients, unwanted pregnancies and discrimination. 45. Lastly, many children cross the frontier to do different kinds of informal work or for the purpose of family reunification. The Special Rapporteur observed a large number of unaccompanied children and interviewed a Honduran boy of 13 who had started on his way to the United States to find his mother after the death of his grandmother, who had been his only relative still living with him in Honduras. Unfortunately, many children fall into the hands of networks engaging in the sale and consumption of drugs or sexual exploitation. The Special Rapporteur adds her voice to the concern expressed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child about “the increasing number of cases of trafficking and sale of children from neighbouring countries who are brought into [Mexico] to work in prostitution”.8 46. The Special Rapporteur would also like to highlight the vulnerability of migrant women victims of family violence, whose migration status is dependent on their husbands. She has learned of cases where men reportedly threatened to take the children away from their wives and have them deported if they reported ill-treatment. During her visit, she had the opportunity to hear testimony which illustrates this situation particularly well. Ms. Dina Evelin Erazo Cortes said she arrived in Mexico in 1980, when she was 14 years old, and since then has lived in the country without official papers. In 1988 she met her present partner, who is Mexican and with whom she has had three children. For 13 years Dina Erazo has been subjected to family violence but has not dared to report it for fear that her illegal situation might be discovered and that she might be deported and separated from her children. It was not until early 2001 that Dina Erazo tried to report the matter after her partner had injured her and threatened to kill her. The first time she went to the police station in Venustiano Carranza, an official in the public prosecutor’s office told her that her partner, as a Mexican citizen, was within his rights. After reporting other incidents, one involving injuries and the other sexual abuse of her daughter, and with the assistance of the National Human Rights Commission, on 7 March 2001 she was summoned to make a statement at the Procurator-General’s Office. There, after waiting for hours with her children, she was told that she was in custody. Later, she was taken with her children to the migrant holding centre in Mexico City where they remained in detention for seven days. Eventually, despite the acts for which he had been reported, the INM released Dina Erazo and her children into the custody of her partner. An authorization enabling Dina Erazo to have her own migration documents as a self-employed person was apparently issued in July 2001.