Mexican authorities said they had found 10 Colombian migrants on Friday who were feared to have been abducted while trying to cross the border with the United States.
Thousands of migrants fleeing violence and poverty risk abduction and exploitation at the hands of criminal gangs while crossing Mexico on the way to the US border.
The 10 migrants went missing in the northwestern state of Sonora — with 1800Migrante, a New York-based legal aid organization, saying criminals had intercepted the bus the Colombians were traveling on.
It added that a relative reported that gang members had abducted the victims, who were members of the same family.
A search was launched in response to a request from the Colombian consulate in Mexico, and Mexican authorities said the migrants had all been found alive later that day.
“The seven men and three women are in good health,” the Sonora prosecutor’s office said, without providing any details on whether they had been abducted.
The group was found near a gas station around two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the toll booth on the highway leaving San Luis Rio Colorado, a border city with the US state of Arizona, the prosecutor’s office added.
According to 1800Migrants, the family was facing threats in Colombia and had been traveling on a bus owned by a company involved in the kidnapping of 63 migrants from Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
The members of that group, who were traveling through Sonora on their way to the border, were all rescued alive at the end of April.
Mexican authorities have urged asylum seekers not to travel to the border in the hope that the United States will allow them to enter next week when it lifts Covid-19 rules used to block most migrants for the past three years.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Friday that migrants were being lured to the frontier by rumors that they will be able to cross over without being sent back, criticizing people smugglers for spreading “false” information.
Source : Macau Business
