EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Police in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas say a group of men with guns stopped a bus on the Reynosa-Matamoros highway and forced down more than 30 passengers over the weekend.
Local news media report 31 of the passengers aboard the red Grupo Senda commercial bus were migrants and were abducted for ransom.
The Tamaulipas state police on Monday reported a chase involving a white Ford Fusion fleeing a Mexican National Guard checkpoint. The Fusion tried to evade pursuing soldiers, but the driver later stopped the car and he and a passenger fled on foot, the state police said in a statement.
Soldiers and police found five migrants inside the car who stated they were Venezuelan nationals who were abducted from a Senda bus traveling to Matamoros. The state police did not immediately clarify if the rescued migrants were abducted in last Saturday night’s event or if their abduction involved a second commercial bus also stopped on the road by armed criminals.
Matamoros Catholic Diocese Vicar Francisco Gallardo on Monday told Mexico’s TV Azteca migrant kidnappings are rife across the border from South Texas.
“If they come from Monterrey to Reynosa or if they come from Reynosa to Matamoros – women, children, families, (unaccompanied) minors – they have been abducted,” he said. “The buoys, the razor wire have not stopped migration.”
Mexican immigration agents are present in every major bus station in the country, checking identity documents even from Mexican nationals. However, many of of the buses targeted by criminals are charter buses taking off from their companies’ parking lots.
The National Migration Institute last year reported Mexican authorities had freed 2,115 migrants of different nationalities who were kidnapped for ransom by organized criminal groups.
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