19 migrants kidnapped from bus in Mexico

Nineteen passengers who were kidnapped from a bus last week in northern Mexico were migrants, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said yesterday, as investigators worked through the murky details of the case. The men were crossing the violent state of Tamaulipas, on the US-Mexican border, on Thursday when four vehicles blocked the road and forced their bus to stop, according to authorities. Armed men then boarded the coach and kidnapped 19 passengers whose names they had on a list.

“I can confirm that they were migrants,” Lopez Obrador said, referring to the abducted men, without specifying their nationalities. The bus was traveling from the port of Tampico to Reynosa, a border city across from McAllen, Texas. Although the bus driver told authorities that 19 passengers were kidnapped, investigation sources have indicated the real number of victims could be as high as 25.

The president told a news conference that one line of investigation is the possibility the men could have staged their own kidnapping as a way to drop off the radar and then enter the United States undetected. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, however, warned the men may have been genuinely kidnapped, and that their lives could be in danger. “They are in a situation of vulnerability on multiple fronts that places them at extraordinary risk,” it said in a statement.