2024-01-04 04:03:09
12:01 AM
After almost four days of captivity, the 31 migrants of 5 nationalities, including 4 Colombians, were rescued by Mexican authorities in the state of Tamaulipas, on the border with the United States.
The information was confirmed by Luisa Alcalde, Secretary of the Interior of Mexico through her X account where she thanked the National Guard and the armed forces of that country. “The governor (of the state of Tamaulipas) Américo Villareal has just informed us that the 31 kidnapped migrants were rescued safely,” she wrote.
For his part, the spokesperson for the federal government, Jesús Ramírez, added on the same social network that the migrants, mostly Venezuelans, “are already in the hands of the authorities and are undergoing the corresponding medical examination.”
He also published four photographs in which the alleged migrants are seen inside a bus. The group includes two children, one carrying a teddy bear, a woman and several men, sitting in front of officers.
Upon confirming the news of the kidnapping, the Mexican authorities deployed a strong operation to find the whereregardings of the 31 migrants from countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Venezuela and Mexico.
The Colombian embassy in Mexico was warned of the incident and immediately communicated with President Gustavo Petro, who was responsible for informing the public through his X account and confirmed that the rescue of the migrants was being coordinated.
For her part, the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) of Mexico, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, explained in the middle of a press conference that the investigation was in charge of the Tamaulipa State Prosecutor’s Office with the support of the Secretary of the Defense, the National Guard, also the Secretary of the Navy and Security. At the head was Governor Americo Villareal who was the one who spread the official news of the meeting.
This was the rescue operation
New Year’s Eve was frustrating for that group of migrants who left their countries with the hope of starting a new life in the United States.
There was little left to fulfill the American dream, but on the night of last Saturday, December 30, the bus in which they were traveling was intercepted by five trucks with heavily armed men on the Reynosa road, Tamaulipas, on the border between Mexico and the United States. United, route that leads to the border area with Brownsville (Texas).
In the middle of that dusty route, the migrants were forced to get off the bus and the group of illegals kidnapped 31 of the 36 people traveling. They only released some Mexican migrants and the driver of the vehicle.
“They were detained by armed men with balaclavas on the Reynosa Matamoros highway at kilometer six, passing the toll booth, forcing 31 of the 36 passengers, who were traveling in it, to get off and board five vans,” said Rodríguez, Secretary of Security in That country.
Although it is known that dangers abound in the dynamics of irregular migration, Rodríguez recognized that the kidnapping of that number of migrants was a totally atypical event, which is why they immediately set off the alarms and implemented several search mechanisms to find all the migrants. victims who were possibly being subject to extortion.
“It must be said that this type of event occurs with one or two migrants, but this number is atypical, it is not frequent,” he noted.
In the place where they were kidnapped, the migrants were apparently going to wait for asylum appointments with the American authorities. As María*, director of a migrant shelter in the city of Piedras Negras, told EL COLOMBIANO, there is frequent news of kidnappings and migratory flows have increased extremely, especially Venezuelans.
“Some Colombians come waiting for their CBP One appointment, which subsequently allows them to travel legally to the United States. These appointments are very delayed and some decide to cross the Rio Grande, that would not happen if that appointment were more effective,” he explained.
To find the whereregardings of the migrants, the authorities analyzed the videos that were recorded on the bus and the routes from which they were transported. Furthermore, according to Rodríguez, they added all forms of struggle; Canine pairs were used in various places, mainly in the colonies where it was presumed that the armed men were hiding with the group of migrants, and the migrants’ cell phones were tracked.
Thanks to the operation that spread throughout the area, the authorities managed to find the exact location of the victims.
The most dangerous migration route
The US-Mexico border was the “most dangerous land migratory route in the world” in 2022, with 686 dead or missing, according to a report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) published in September.
Migrations to the United States reached a record number last year. According to the US Border Patrol, between October 2022 and September 2023, 2.4 million migrant entries were recorded across the southern border of the United States, a record.
Last Wednesday, the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, visited Mexico City to hold a meeting with the Mexican president regarding migration.
López Obrador wrote in
With more than 3,000 km of border with the United States, Mexico is a transit and retention country for undocumented foreign migrants who clash with the restrictive immigration policies of the United States.
Foreign migrants who cross Mexico from south to north come mainly from the three Central American countries plagued by violence or poverty (Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador), from the Caribbean (Haiti, Cuba) or from Venezuela. Thousands of them are stranded on the border with the United States, in cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez or Matamoros.
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