On Sunday, Mexican police found 49 mutilated bodies, believed by some to be migrants, on a road that connects the industrial city of Monterrey with the United States border.

The corpses had their hands, heads, and feet chopped off, making them difficult to identify. An investigator who spoke to Milenio newspaper on Monday speculated the victims could be undocumented immigrants from Central America on their way to the United States.

“Because of the large quantity of corpses, our first hypothesis is that it could be the bodies of illegal immigrants traveling on a bus; there could have been a problem between a drug cartel and a coyote over fees,” an unnamed source told Milenio. For security reasons, he did not provide his name.

Drug cartels have increasingly used the public display of corpses as warning to other cartels or criminal organizations. This month alone dozens of dead bodies were found in Nuevo Laredo and Guadalajara, but the 49 found this weekend were more than in both other cities combined.

Read the full story at Univision News