A busload of about 50 migrants had been kidnapped by a gang in northern Mexico in the latest of a series of mass abductions, although 9 had been later discovered, Mexico’s president and police mentioned Wednesday.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador mentioned Nationwide Guard troops had been trying to find the migrants in an space across the northern metropolis of Matehuala. The migrants had been touring north towards the U.S. border in a bus from the southern state of Chiapas, when the car, passengers and drivers had been kidnapped.
“They’ve already discovered some,” López Obrador mentioned at his morning information briefing. “Initially, there have been reviews of fifty,” he mentioned of the overall variety of victims, with out specifying what number of had been positioned. “We hope to rescue them,” he added.
9 migrants — six males and three ladies — had been discovered Tuesday close to a freeway within the state of Nuevo Leon, the state police division reported. Police didn’t say whether or not they had been freed or escaped. The migrants from Venezuela and Honduras had been discovered wandering in a rural space, asking for assist.
Bus firm officers first reported the kidnapping on Tuesday, and advised native media they’d obtained calls for for $1,500 apiece to launch the migrants.
Migrants stand on the Mexican facet of the U.S.-Mexico border, on the banks of the Rio Grande, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on March 29, 2023. (AP Photograph/Fernando Llano, File)
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“Sadly, there are gangs that have interaction in kidnapping,” López Obrador mentioned, noting it was the identical space the place about 20 individuals had been kidnapped from vans in April. The April abduction led police to mount an enormous search by air and land — they usually discovered not solely the 20 migrants they had been searching for, however about 80 extra migrants being held towards their will, apparently by the identical gang.
The realm the place the present search is underway is the place the northern states of San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Leon meet, and the place drug cartels have lengthy been lively.
Related mass abductions have additionally occurred within the northern border state of Sonora.
In early Might, a authorities report mentioned over 2,000 migrants were kidnapped by smuggling gangs and drug cartels in 2022. Mexico’s nationwide immigration company mentioned authorities had freed 2,115 migrants of all nationalities kidnapped by gangs in 2022.
Gangs and cartels seem like more and more charging migrants charges to cross Mexico, after which kidnapping them for ransom. There was a string of such mass migrant abductions in Mexico in latest months.