The Mexican authorities came to the aid of 31 migrants of different nationalities kidnapped by armed men this past weekend.
The migrants were rescued through a joint operation of the Tamaulipas state prosecutor’s office, the Mexican Army, and the Mexican National Guard on January 3. The victims had allegedly been kidnapped from a bus traveling between Monterrey and Matamoros, a border city not far from Brownsville, on December 30.
An armed gang allegedly intercepted the bus on the highway near Rio Bravo. Of the 36 individuals onboard, 31 were forced into vehicles and taken away, reported Rosa Icela RodrÃguez, the Mexican secretary of federal security, according to Fox News.
Organized crime networks regularly kidnap people along the Mexico-Texas border, with over 2,000 such cases reported in 2022. These groups reportedly hold migrants for ransom, extorting large sums of money from their relatives living in the United States.
However, this kidnapping involved an uncharacteristically large number of migrants. Efforts to track the kidnapped migrants via their cell phones as well as through helicopter missions were swiftly launched, RodrÃguez relayed to reporters.
The 31 migrants, who hailed from Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Honduras and included minors, as photos suggest, are now under the government’s protection, as indicated by Jesús RamÃrez Cuevas, a spokesperson for the Mexican president. No information was provided as to how the Mexican authorities freed the migrants.
Several laws recently passed in Texas aim to curb unlawful entry into the United States on the southern border. They have included measures to enhance the criminal penalties of those convicted of human smuggling or maintaining stash houses, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
They have also aimed to beef up security at the border by constructing more border wall fortifications, deploying state troopers, and criminalizing unlawful entry.
