The 1800 Migrante law firm reported this Thursday the kidnapping of 95 Ecuadorians near Tapachula, a Chiapas city on the border with Guatemala.
On Wednesday, the criminals took over the buses in which the migrants wanted to continue their journey north, to the United States.
Their course changed towards a house in Puerto Chiapas, where the kidnappers demanded ransoms from the families of the Ecuadorians.
One of them managed to contact William Murillo, spokesperson for the legal organization, who made the case public and received threats for it.
“If you continue reporting, we will return them to you in bags,” the lawyer explained in a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS.
Those held managed to escape last Thursday night before a raid of which the captors found out in time.
The odyssey of almost a hundred Ecuadorian migrants began on Wednesday afternoon on the outskirts of Tapachula.
“I contacted the family [of the kidnapped boy] a few minutes ago and he tells me that he was not violent.
They took them to a warehouse on the buses that transported them from the border with Guatemala,” explains Murillo.
One of the migrants, upon realizing that he was kidnapped, managed to pass his location to 1800 Migrante, who lives in the United States.
“I automatically contacted the Ecuadorian consular corps in New York.
They coordinated the information to pass this data to the consular offices of Mexico,” says the lawyer.
The consul general of the South American country then decides to contact the Chiapas Prosecutor's Office to organize an operation in the house where the migrants are kidnapped.
Patrols of the state police and the National Guard during the search in Tapachula, this March 22 at dawn. Damián Sánchez Jesús (Cuartoscuro)
Upon arriving at the Puerto Chiapas warehouse on Thursday night, federal, state and municipal agents did not find anyone, according to a statement from the Chiapas Prosecutor's Office.
The activist and director of the Center for Human Dignification, Luis Rey Villagrán, accompanied the raid and spoke with the local people.
“The neighbors say that there had been a big movement for more than two hours and they noticed that many people ran out of that place where they were supposedly being held,” explains the activist.
Murillo has also confirmed with one of the relatives of the kidnapped people that the migrants fled.
"There was no one because the kidnappers ran away and said 'la migra is coming.'
Everyone ran away and that's why they didn't find anyone.
It seems that the operation was leaked,” explains the lawyer.
The National Guard and other police forces deployed a search device of which there is no news so far.
During the time that the migrants were detained, the criminals tried to extort money from the families for their release.
According to Murillo, some of these people even paid the ransom.
At the same time, the kidnappers tried to intimidate the lawyer for making the case public.
“The kidnappers called me to threaten me, to tell me not to get involved.
"If I did something they would give them to us in plastic bags," explains the lawyer.
He also denounces the change in the pattern of human trafficking that migrants suffer from organized crime in Chiapas, a region that is in dispute between the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels.
“Traditional coyoteros are being displaced by narco-coyoteros who use heavy-caliber weapons, killing mercilessly,” he explains.
Soldiers and agents of the National Guard, this Friday during the search.Damián Sánchez Jesús (Cuartoscuro)
The Ecuadorian lawyer has confirmed to EL PAÍS that 19 Ecuadorian migrants are in custody in the offices of the National Migration Institute (INM) in Tapachula.
Rey Villagrán affirms that the immigration authorities detained around thirty migrants from that country in the sweep after the operation.
This medium has tried, without success, to contact the INM and the Consulate of Ecuador in Mexico by telephone to find out if the migrants escaped from their kidnappers.
The Chiapas Prosecutor's Office refers to the statement they published on their social networks.
The Government of Ecuador has not been informed by any Mexican authority so far, according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabriela Sommerfeld.
“Given the news of the alleged kidnapping of 95 Ecuadorian citizens in Mexico, the Mexican authorities have been contacted and there is no official information,” he maintained, reports
Carolina Mella.
Both the activist and the lawyer agree that the opacity of the institutions regarding the case is a problem that only harms migrants.
“The escape, which was also confirmed by the boy who contacted us, is something that the authorities do not want to say.
We are surprised by this complicit attitude of the authorities,” Murillo denounces.
“It is the responsibility of the INM, and neither they nor the Attorney General's Office of the Republic have given an official position on the facts.
For us, they are putting up a curtain of opacity that once again puts migrants and those of us who are involved in the issue at risk,” explains activist Rey Villarán.
The law firm 1800 Migrante was the first to report on February 17 an armed attack against a group of migrants near the town of Saric, Sonora, just 80 kilometers from the border with the United States.
Thanks to the heartbreaking accounts of witnesses to the attack, the State Prosecutor's Office was forced to come out and give explanations, in a country where crimes often go unpunished.
They admitted to the murder of Jonzi, a four-year-old Ecuadorian boy, and two women from Peru and Ecuador.
A number that the attorney general's office never updated, despite the fact that 1800 Migrante reported days after the death of another Honduran migrant.
“They say and maintain that there are three dead and we have even published the photo and name of the fourth dead,” explains Murillo.
So far, in the south the authorities have not commented on the kidnapping and release of the 95 Ecuadorians.
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