At least 50 migrants from Central and South America and two drivers were kidnapped early Monday while traveling by bus on a highway in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, local media reported Tuesday. The captors, allegedly members of the Gulf Cartel, demanded a ransom of $1,500 per person to free them.
The Nuevo Leon Security Secretariat confirmed that nine migrants were found around 4:30 p.m. Members of the Civil Force "found six male people asking for help. Subsequently, three more migrants were located. The ages of the rescued foreigners range between 18 and 35 years, with a origin from the countries of Venezuela and Honduras."
According to the newspaper Proceso, they were in bushes, dehydrated and with some injuries, and will soon testify before the State Prosecutor's Office.
The bus was hijacked on a highway in San Luis Potosi. In the photo, one of the highways that cross the region. Bloomberg/Getty Images
The bus left Saturday night from Tapachula (Chiapas) to Monterrey (Nuevo Léon), with fifty migrants on board mainly from Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua.
According to Mexican media, the kidnapped migrants had permission to transit through Mexico.
The owner of the company to which the vehicle belongs, Perfecto Vázquez, said he realized thanks to the GPS that it was diverted from its usual route at the height of the municipality of Matehuala, near the border between San Luis Potosí and Nuevo León.
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"They speak to me yesterday Monday morning, more or less at 4:30 in the morning, and they tell me: 'We have a bus with illegal passengers,' to which I tell them that the passengers are not illegal, they are migrants with their permission to be able to transit in the country," Vázquez explained, in statements collected by Proceso.
The owner of the transport company said that the person who contacted him said he was a member of the Gulf Cartel and that he demanded $ 1,500 per person "to continue circulating."
The vice president of zone II of the National Confederation of Mexican Carriers (Conatram), José Luis López Hernández, assured Proceso that "there are many cases [like this] that are not being reported. According to information passed to me, there are other bus thefts."
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Lopez lamented "that the government is not paying attention to that." "We are suffering a crisis of insecurity in the state that we did not suffer before, things are getting very complicated, we do not have security on the roads," he insisted.
The kidnapping of the migrants comes just days after the U.S. ended Title 42 at the border and activated new asylum rules that expedite deportations of those who don't qualify for the process.
A day after the expiration of this health regulation, which allowed the US government to expel more than two million asylum seekers since 2020, Mexico announced the suspension of the delivery of permits to migrants to transit through the country, a decision that was met with protests.
