Migrants thrust by US officials into arms of cartels

NUEVO LAREDO (AP) — The gangsters trawling Nuevo Laredo know just what they’re looking for: men and women missing their shoelaces.

Those are migrants who made it to the United States to ask for asylum, only to be taken into custody and stripped of their laces — to keep them from hurting themselves.

And then they were thrust into danger, sent back to the lawless border state of Tamaulipas.

In years past, migrants moved quickly through this violent territory on their way to the United States.

Now, due to Trump administration policies, they remain there for weeks and sometimes months as they await their US court dates, often in the hands of the gangsters who hold the area in a vise-like grip.

Here, migrants in limbo are prey, and a boon to smugglers.

They recount harrowing stories of robbery, extortion by criminals and crooked officials, and kidnappings by competing cartels.

They tell of being captured by armed bandits who demand a ransom: they can pay for illegal passage to the border, or merely for their freedom, but either way they must pay.

And then they might be nabbed again by another gang. Or, desperate not to return to the homes they fled in the first place, they might willingly pay smugglers again.

That’s what a 32-year-old Honduran accountant was contemplating. She had twice paid coyotes to help her cross into the US only to be returned. Most recently, in September, she was sent back across the bridge from Brownsville to Matamoros.

Now, biding her time with her daughter in the city of Monterrey, she said one thing is for sure: “We are a little gold mine for the criminals.”