Mexican crime cartel ‘kidnaps 100 members of migrant caravan’
AT LEAST 100 members of the migrant caravan travelling through Mexico in an attempt to reach the United States have been kidnapped by the Zetas crime cartel, according to human rights officials in the country.
Fleeing gang violence and threats in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, thousands of the migrants reached Mexico City on Monday and yesterday. But reports have emerged that a number of members, including children, have gone missing.
It is feared they have been taken by criminal gangs, who abduct migrants to extort money from their families.
Human rights activists and officials in the southern states of Oaxaca and Veracruz say at least 100 migrants were kidnapped in the state of Puebla and allegedly handed over to the Zetas gang.
Arturo Peimbert, the human rights ombudsman in Oaxaca, told local media that migrants accepted rides in fruit trucks despite warnings not to, and were locked in after getting on board.
“The testimonies I have heard [of those who managed to escape] was that many of those migrants were handed over to organised crime near the federal police base in Puebla,” he added.
The ombudsman said that promises from the state government of Veracruz to provide transport to Mexico City were later retracted, creating a sense of desperation among many migrants.
Numbering more than 4,000 now, the Central Americans have been trekking steadily from their home countries in hot, unsanitary conditions in an attempt to reach Mexico’s border with the United States and ask for asylum. In Mexico City, they have been given shelter and other humanitarian help by the city government.
For years, organised crime has preyed on migrants passing through Mexico, from taxing them to use established routes to kidnapping them and imprisoning them in safe houses.
The criminals then ring the victims’ relatives, either at home or in the US, to demand ransoms.
The size of the group of migrants currently passing through Mexico has brought renewed attention to the plight of those fleeing violence and gangs in their home countries.
Donald Trump, the US president, has ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric as the groups approach the US border. This week, in the final run-up to yesterday’s midterm elections, he told the migrants to “turn back now, because you’re not getting in”. He has pledged to send 15,000 extra troops to the border to protect Americans.