Migrants talk about abductions in Mexico at US border
2022.12.14 06:24
Migrants talk about abductions in Mexico at US border
Budrigannews.com – Nine migrants who were interviewed by Reuters said that many of the hundreds of migrants who crossed the Rio Grande this week from Ciudad Juarez into El Paso were part of a group that was kidnapped in Mexico while they were traveling to the United States.
According to the nine migrants’ testimony, the northern state of Durango saw multiple kidnappings over the course of several days. People were taken to at least two main locations and held against their will while ransoms were demanded.
The kidnappings serve as a stark illustration of the dangers migrants face as they traverse Mexico, traversing regions plagued by drug violence and weak rule of law.
The vast majority of the grabbed travelers were Nicaraguans, who have been passing on their country in developing numbers to guarantee refuge and seek after better monetary open doors in the US, supported by the information they are probably not going to be promptly expelled because of chilly relations between their administration and Washington.
According to immigration expert Stephanie Leutert at the University of Texas at Austin, the incidents appear to be one of the largest known mass kidnappings in Mexico in recent years.
Four migrants claimed that people wearing police uniforms stopped the buses they were traveling in and tried to extort them for between 200 pesos ($10) and 5,000 pesos ($255). After that, armed men took the entire busload to properties nearby, where they were held against their will.
The state security office in Durango stated that municipalities were in charge of their own officers and that it had not received any complaints about state police officers who were involved in the kidnapping. Although the Durango prosecutor’s office confirmed that rescues took place on Dec. 5 and 7, it stated that it had not initiated an investigation because it had not received any complaints.
Mexico’s Migration Institute (INM) reported that on Dec. 5, it freed more than 250 people from a property in the Durango town of Ciudad Lerdo with the help of the Army and National Guard. In a separate statement, the National Guard confirmed the particulars.
Six migrants who spoke with Reuters described being held captive for several days in another incident. Two of them indicated that they were safeguarded alongside many different travelers by Mexican government policing Dec. 7, and afterward started strolling north on expressways.
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According to Fernando Reverte, president of Mapimi, a municipality through which the kidnapped migrants passed after being freed, there were approximately 1,500 of them.
One of the migrants who claimed to have been kidnapped, Mario Rizo, said that he believed his bus was stopped by people in a municipal police patrol truck near the nearby cities of Gomez Palacio and Lerdo. During the kidnapping, two additional migrants claimed to have witnessed individuals wearing municipal police uniforms.
Ivan Torres, the head of the public safety unit in Gomez Palacio, confirmed that at least 300 people were rescued from a rural site in the area on December 7, but that his officers were not involved in the kidnapping. A request for clarification was not immediately answered by the Lerdo mayor’s office.
The total number of people kidnapped in the region over the past week could not be confirmed by Reuters. The INM figure and migrant estimates of the various incidents suggest it was greater than 1,000.
Specialists have not declared anybody gotten or accused of capturing.
According to the migrants, the kidnappers prioritized women and children and rationed their meager food and water supplies. They said they went through crisp evenings dozing on floors without covers in what had all the earmarks of being an occasion lobby. They were told to keep quiet by the kidnappers.
Rizo, who is currently in El Paso, Texas, stated, “I sincerely felt I had reached the end… that I wasn’t going to survive.”
Rizo claims that the kidnappers quickly fled on December 7 when they appeared to spot authorities outside. The migrants entered the building through the front door, where they discovered National Guard, Army, and INM personnel outside.
The National Guard stated that it participated in the rescue on December 7 just as it did on December 5. The Army and INM did not respond to requests for comment regarding the rescue.
Byron Montiel, a Nicaraguan immigrant who is also now living in El Paso, showed Reuters a receipt for a money transfer that he claimed was sent by a relative to the kidnappers, as well as text messages from a kidnapper demanding money from one of his relatives.
One of the largest attempts at group crossings in recent memory saw the group of migrants arrive at Mexico’s northern border on Sunday and form a long line alongside the wall.
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According to Leutert, the incident was just one example of the hardships faced by migrants on their long journey to the United States.
She stated, “This kidnapping and others show the risks that migrants face in Mexico and the various groups attempting to make money off of them.”
