The US State Department is asking American tourists to be careful when visiting Mexico, but five states there have received the highest warning under an overhauled travel advisory system.

The department on Wednesday gave a “do not travel” advisory—the harshest of the new four-level alert classification—to northern Mexico’s border state of Tamaulipas and the country’s Pacific coast states of Sinaloa, Guerrero, Michoacan and Colima. The advisory says these states are rife with crime.

The department has previously warned about traveling to all or part of the five states, but the new rating puts them in the same category as Somalia, Yemen, Syria or Afghanistan, according to the Chicago Tribune.

If travelers decide to visit Mexico, the department tells them to use toll roads, if possible, and avoid driving at night. U.S. tourists are asked to be “extra vigilant” when using ATMs or banks and to exercise caution while visiting bars.

In an interview with Newsweek last month, Mexican Secretary of Tourism Enrique de la Madrid Cordero said: “In Mexico’s main tourist areas for foreigners—Cancún-Riviera Maya and Los Cabos—we haven’t heard of foreign tourists’ casualties that stemmed from insecurity in the last two years, so I would like to see those [death] cases and provide an answer based on that.”

The US State Department placed Quintana Roo, on level 2 advisory, which calls on travelers to exercise caution but does not explicitly suggest them to avoid the areas.

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Source: Newsweek

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