EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A Mexican judge has sentenced a man and a woman to 50 years in prison in connection with the kidnapping of two Cuban nationals who came to the border to seek asylum.
Francisco Manuel T.S. and Erika Janeth T.A. in December of 2022 allegedly abducted the two men from Cuba after they arrived in Juarez, Mexico, and were trying to get their bearings to cross into El Paso, Texas.
The pair took the asylum-seekers to a home in the Lomas de Poleo neighborhood of northwest Juarez and forcibly kept them there for 45 days, the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
The kidnappers were demanding a $12,000 ransom from the migrants’ families but released one of them on Jan. 18, 2023, after receiving a $3,000 payment, the Attorney General’s Office said.
The freed migrant sought help from authorities in Juarez. He was referred to the Chihuahua state police and guided officers to the house where he was held against his will. The Attorney General’s Office said Francisco Manuel T.S. and Erika Janeth T.A. were arrested at the home while keeping watch on their remaining Cuban hostage.
In addition to sentencing them to prison time, the Mexican judge ordered the kidnappers to pay a $20,000 fine and unspecified monetary damages to their victims.
Chihuahua state authorities did not say if the Cubans made it to the U.S. after all or where they currently reside. The Attorney General’s Office did not specify the relationship between the condemned, although local news media referred to them as a “couple.”
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