UN says people disappearing in northern Mexico border city
MEXICO CITY — Jessica Molina has not seen or heard from her husband since March, when Mexican marines broke through their door in Nuevo Laredo and took Trejo and a friend away.
Molina, a U.S. citizen, said Wednesday that her 41-year-old Mexican husband, Jose Daniel Trejo Garcia, is a mechanic with an established business in Laredo, Texas, where they live. They were only in Nuevo Laredo because she had recently had surgery in Monterrey and was returning to have stitches removed.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday called on the Mexican government to “take urgent measures to stop the wave of forced disappearances in Nuevo Laredo and surrounding areas” and said “there are strong indications” that they were committed “by a federal security force.”
The U. N. office documented the disappearance of 23 people since the start of February in Nuevo Laredo and said there could be many more. While it did not name those missing, Trejo Garcia is among those counted by the non-governmental Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee.
“We have documented 56 forced disappearances from Jan. 20 to May 21,” said Raymundo Ramos, president of that group. “The majority are attributed to personnel from special operations of the navy.”
Neither Mexico’s navy, which has contributed marines to the country’s fight against drug violence, nor the Interior Department, which is in charge of domestic security, immediately responded to requests for comment.
Tensions were high in Nuevo Laredo when Trejo disappeared on March 27.
On March 25, marines had been ambushed three times by gunmen. One marine was killed and several wounded. During the third clash, a helicopter was called in. A fam- ily’s car driving through a shootout was hit and a mother and two of her children were killed. The father and one boy were wounded, but survived.
The navy initially denied responsibility, but after an expert concluded the fatal shots came from above, it admitted its helicopter accidentally killed the civilians.
Molina said the marines who interrogated her and her husband at 1:30 a.m. on March 27 asked if they knew about what had happened in the helicopter incident. The couple explained why they were in Nuevo Laredo. Her husband showed them the business cards for his auto repair shop, but they took him away without any search warrant or arrest order, she said.