Migrants Going North Now Risk Kidnappings - NYTimes.com: TECATE, Mexico — For 37 days, the Salvadoran immigrant was held captive in a crowded room near the border with scores of people, all of them Central Americans who had been kidnapped while heading north, hoping to cross into the United States. He finally got out in August, he said, after the Mexican Army raided the house in the middle of the night to free them.
“The army said: ‘Don’t run. We’re here to help you,’ ” recalled the migrant, a 30-year-old father of three who insisted that his name not be printed for fear of either being kidnapped again or deported. “I kept running.”
Getting to “el norte” has never been a cakewalk. Along with long treks through desert terrain, death-defying river crossings and perilous rides clinging onto trains, there have always been con men and crooked police officers preying on migrants along the way.
But Mexican human rights groups that monitor migration say the threats foreigners face as they cross Mexico for the United States have grown significantly in recent months. Organized crime groups have begun taking aim at migrants as major sources of illicit revenue, even as the financial crisis in the United States has reduced the number of people willing to risk the journey.
Kidnapping people for ransom is a pervasive problem in this country, although victims have typically been prosperous people with bank accounts that can be emptied at the nearest A.T.M., or those with relatives willing to hand over significant sums to save them.
