EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican police have taken to shelters 10 African migrants they found wandering along a highway south of Juarez after their kidnappers got paid and released them.
The Chihuahua state police on Tuesday fielded a 911 call from a passer-by who alerted them to a group of people walking about “erratically and in deplorable conditions” along the Juarez-Villa Ahumada Highway.
The officers approached the subjects, none of whom spoke Spanish. The Mexican officers were able to strike a conversation in English with the men. They told them they were Sudanese and Moroccan migrants who had been abducted by members of a criminal gang.
“The group stated being the victims of kidnapping and torture and used to extort their families” out of money, the state police said in a statement on Wednesday.
Police called first responders from the Mexican Red Cross to the scene, who administered medical assistance and found the men to be malnourished, dehydrated and showing multiple unspecified injuries throughout their bodies, the state police said.
The four Sudanese and six Moroccans were taken to a shelter for further medical and psychological assistance. The state police said its investigators and agents with the National Migration Institute are investigating the kidnapping.
Crimes including kidnapping and extorsion against migrants from third countries passing through Mexico are common, according to advocates in the United States. Also, torture is not unheard of, especially in Juarez.
The kidnappings sometimes occur even after the migrants have paid smugglers thousands of dollars to deliver them to the U.S. border, advocates say.
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