(Mexico City) – Thirty-one “foreigners” were kidnapped Saturday in northern Mexico as they were traveling by bus to a U.S. border town, a regional security spokesman said Tuesday.
The driver reported that the bus was “intercepted by five vehicles” and that “31 of the 36 passengers” were kidnapped, Tamaulipas state security spokesman Jorge Cuellar told Milenio.
He added that the kidnapped people were “foreigners” and the other five passengers were Mexicans.
The bus departed from Monterrey, an industrial city to the north, and its final destination was in Matamoros, a border town from which migrants are trying to cross to Brownsville, Texas.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during his daily press conference that the search began on Saturday.
Between October 2022 and September 2023, more than 2.4 million interceptions of land migrants, a record number, were recorded in the United States, according to the US Border Patrol.
The US-Mexico border has become “the world's most dangerous land migration route,” with 686 people killed or missing, according to a September report by the International Organization for Migration.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Mexico City the week of Christmas to meet with President Lopez Obrador on the issue of migration between the two countries. After the meeting, the Mexican President mentioned “important agreements” without further details.
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