LA TRINITARIA, Chiapas - A U.S. Border Patrol search and rescue team is teaching officials at Mexico´s southern border how to help migrants in danger after sneaking into the country from Central America, a U.S. official said.

The team of a dozen U.S. agents is leading a two-week training program for members of Grupo Beta, Mexico´s special migrant-protection force, and other government officials in the Chiapas state town of La Trinitaria, near the border with Guatemala.

"This training is part of a binational commitment to look at any and all possibilities to prevent the loss of human life," U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora said Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of illegal migrants, many of them from Central America, enter Mexico´s southern border on their way to the United States.

Mexico´s National Migration Institute said it deported more than 100,000 illegal migrants from January to October. More than 6,500 were rescued or given medical assistance in the same period.

The course, offered at the request of the Mexican government and the first to be held in Mexico, started Dec. 4 and ends Friday.

Miriam Toledano, a Grupo Beta agent from the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and the only woman taking the course, said she expects the training to be valuable.

"I´m really ready to learn all I can, because the central aim of what they´re teaching here is to save lives, and in Mexico we have to save the lives of a lot of people who come across from other countries," Toledano said.

The 24 Mexican officials are being taught land navigation, rappel, medical rescue and first aid among other skills. The U.S. government is donating the equipment used during the training.

The groups are being trained at rescue operations in rough terrain or rivers, and using maps and global positioning systems.

The U.S. Border Patrol has trained more than 1,500 Mexican officials in search and rescue techniques since 1998, but the training in Comitan is the first course conducted outside the United States, Zamora said.