MEXICO CITY: Authorities in northwest Mexico rescued 113 abducted migrants from various countries from a building near the border with the United States.
Thousands of migrants, travelling through Mexico to the US border in search of safety from violence and poverty, risk being kidnapped and used by criminal groups.
According to AFP, the latest discovery in the municipality of San Luis Rio Colorado, which borders the US state of Arizona, comes after authorities found 10 Colombian residents believed to have been kidnapped.
The Sonora state prosecutor’s office posted on its official Facebook page that “people from El Salvador, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, the US, India, Peru, Bangladesh, Nepal, Cuba, Colombia, Brazil and Afghanistan were brought to safety this time.”
Five people, including two Hondurans, were detained as part of the operation for being “responsible for the crimes against the migrants.”
The group of foreign nationals held hostage in the building hailed the police “with applause, blessings and prayers,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
Authorities in Mexico have advised asylum seekers not to go to the border in the hopes that the United States will permit them entry next week when it lifts Covid-19 restrictions that have been used to deter the majority of migrants for the previous three years.
In a statement on Friday, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard criticised people traffickers for disseminating “false” information and said that migrants are being drawn to the border by rumours that they would be allowed to pass without being deported by the US authorities.
