× Investigators Scrambling to Solve Mystery Just Miles From U.S.-Mexico Border After Gunmen Take At Least 19 People

Masked gunmen barged onto a bus in northern Mexico, carrying a list of names.

They left without firing a single shot, taking at least 19 passengers with them as they sped away from the scene. And so far, they seem to have vanished without a trace.

Where did the missing passengers go?

It’s a mystery that’s left Mexican officials scrambling for answers as public pressure mounts.

Authorities are investigating what they’ve said may be a mass kidnapping, and Mexico’s top leaders have offered several possible explanations in recent days.

They’ve revealed one key detail that’s likely a big piece of the puzzle: All the passengers the gunmen removed from the bus were likely migrants traveling through Mexico and heading to the United States.

And the theories authorities have presented have serious implications in the immigration debate on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

Theory 1: The migrants were kidnapped

Officials at first tried to downplay the possibility the migrants were kidnapped, but later announced the a national operation to find the missing migrants.

What we know so far:

Gunmen intercepted the bus March 7 along the highway that connects San Fernando, a town in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with the city of Reynosa, which sits across the US border from McAllen, Texas.

It took days for officials to reveal the incident — something that’s drawn criticism in Mexican media. Officials have defended the delay, saying they weren’t trying to hide information but were waiting to confirm facts before releasing them.

San Fernando was the site of a notorious migrant massacre less than a decade ago. Investigators found the remains of 72 migrants at a house there in 2010. The next year they found the remains of nearly 200 people in mass graves in the area while investigating cases of passengers kidnapped from buses.

But you don’t have to go back that far to find other examples of kidnapped migrants in Tamaulipas, a cartel stronghold. Just this week, authorities announced they’d rescued a group of 34 migrants who were being held there.

What experts say:

For years, advocates and analysts have warned that Central American migrants are often assaulted as they make their way north through Mexico. In 2011, the country’s human rights commission estimated that more than 11,000 migrants had been kidnapped in a six-month period.

Kidnappers take different approaches in different parts of the country, says Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin. In Tamaulipas, intercepting buses is a common tactic, says Leutert, who co-authored a report analyzing migrant kidnappings last year.

“Armed cars stopping the bus, people with weapons getting on and pulling people off, it’s a modus operandi of kidnapping that fits clearly into a pattern,” she says.

Maureen Meyer, director for Mexico and migrant rights at the Washington Office on Latin America, says there’s one thing that’s notable about this most recent incident: It’s getting a lot of attention. But Meyer says she sees it as part of a “continuation of kidnappings” that Mexican authorities haven’t done enough to investigate.

“Migrants are targeted for crimes in Mexico precisely because of their vulnerable status,” she says. “It has become a lucrative way for criminal groups to gain thousands of dollars per migrant as they’re holding them for ransom.”

Rafael Alonso Hernandez Lopez, who directs a doctoral program in migration studies at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (The College of the Northern Border) in Tijuana, said it’s notable that Mexican officials are talking about what happened at all. He noted it’s the first such incident since Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in December.

“The problem dates back years, and it’s unfortunate that it keeps happening. … Perhaps what’s changing is that in the new administration there hadn’t been any events like this, and they hadn’t been made visible,” he said. “The fact that the federal government itself has made this situation public also speaks in another way.”

Theory 2: The gunmen were smugglers the migrants contracted

As word spread of the migrants’ disappearance, Lopez Obrador and one of his top national security officials floated the possibility Tuesday that the migrants weren’t kidnapped, but rather were simply meeting up with smugglers they’d contracted to help them get across the US-Mexico border.

“There’s a hypothesis that this is a way of getting to the US territory. It’s not that they disappear, but that this is how they cross the border,” Lopez Obrador told reporters.

What we know so far:

Mexican officials say they’ve been checking with authorities in Central America to see whether anyone has reported loved ones missing. And so far, they haven’t received any reports.

Mexican Security Minister Alfonso Durazo told reporters it’s notable that no shots were fired when the gunmen boarded the bus, and that only men were taken.

“Intelligence indicates that criminal groups that operate in the area offer services to transport migrants to the United States,” Durazo told reporters Tuesday.

At a news conference Thursday, Mexico’s defense secretary presented what he said were images of the bus crossing through a military checkpoint more than an hour before the ambush. All 44 passengers aboard the bus were screened at the time, he said.

Authorities now believe the migrants onboard were carrying fake Mexican IDs, he said, because personnel who checked passengers’ documents didn’t register any foreigners.

What experts say:

For Leutert, the idea that masked gunmen would ambush a bus as part of a smuggling deal doesn’t add up.

“If you were just trying to meet, you would imagine you would just wait at the bus stop. It doesn’t fit into the pattern of migrant smuggling,” she says. “And it fits into the pattern of migrant kidnapping that we see. That’s why for me, these incidents are really concerning.”

Jeremy Slack, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies the impact of drug violence on migration, says it’s unclear whether authorities know more than they’ve let on so far. But both theories Mexican officials have presented could turn out to be true.

The migrants may have hired smugglers, he said, who later decided they wanted more money and decided to kidnap them rather than take them across the border.

“Just because you agree on something with a smuggler,” Slack says, “doesn’t mean the terms don’t change.”

And sometimes, he says, migrants make a smuggling deal with one criminal group, only to be intercepted by another along the way.

No matter which theory turns out to be true, there are major implications in the immigration debate

The timing of the migrants’ disappearance is notable.

It comes as:

• US authorities are increasingly forcing more migrants to stay in Mexico, both by significantly limiting the numbers of people who may seek asylum daily at ports of entry, and by sending a growing number of migrants who are seeking asylum back across the border to wait while their cases make their way through US courts

• US officials say the number of migrant families making their way to the border has spiked significantly, and that migrants are increasingly arriving at the border in large groups

• Mexican officials vow that protecting the human rights of migrants is a top priority, but Mexican border cities have struggled to handle the influx of migrants

Experts say this combination of factors could make what’s already a volatile situation even worse.

“The border towns could become very unmanageable very quickly,” says Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America. “Criminal groups also follow migrants because they’re easy victims. This may also impact the border communities in a way they haven’t anticipated.”

Leutert, of the University of Texas at Austin, says the brazen nature of the recent bus incident seems like a throwback to more violent times along the border — and that concerns her.

“To do a mass kidnapping, it’s a lot more complicated than just throwing two people in the back of a car,” she says. “It requires a different level of sophistication and corruption. … We haven’t really seen any high-profile cases like this in a while.”</s>MEXICO CITY - Nineteen passengers who were kidnapped from a bus last week in northern Mexico were migrants, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday, 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.

"We are investigating to get to the bottom of this, because there's a theory that this could be a way to get into the United States, that they didn't actually disappear but rather crossed the border. There have already been two similar cases," he said.

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.

Tamaulipas is a battleground between the Zetas and Gulf drug cartels.

The kidnapping ocurred near the city of San Fernando, one of the most violent in the state. It is the same area where 72 migrants were kidnapped and murdered in 2010 by the Zetas.

Authorities say that in that case, the cartel tried to forcibly recruit the migrants, who were mostly from Central America, then killed them when they refused.

Lopez Obrador said his government was committed to stopping "horrific" incidents like the 2010 massacre.</s>Nineteen men were kidnapped at gunpoint from a bus traveling from Tampico to Reynosa in Tamaulipas last Thursday, police said yesterday.

The victims are believed to have been Central American migrants traveling north to the United States.

Local authorities told reporters that 41 passengers were on board the Transpais bus when it was forced to stop by four vehicles blocking the road near the town of San Fernando, about 100 kilometers from Reynosa. That particular stretch of highway is considered one of the most dangerous in the state.

Four armed and masked men boarded the bus and forced 19 male passengers to get off and board the kidnappers’ waiting vehicles. After the kidnappers left with their captives, the driver continued on to Reynosa with his remaining passengers and reported the incident.

A similar incident took place on the same highway in 2010 when members of the Zetas cartel kidnapped 72 migrants — mostly young men and women from Central America — and murdered them all in what is now known as the San Fernando massacre.

The border state is one of the regions with the highest number of disappearances. Much of the state’s territory is disputed in an active conflict between Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, both of which have been weakened and fragmented by the capture of leaders from both sides.

Authorities say that criminal groups often kidnap men traveling on highways in Tamaulipas to force them to join their ranks. Migrants traveling to the United States have been especially vulnerable to such attacks.
Mexican authorities announce a national search operation is underway after revealing masked gunmen with a list of names stormed a bus on March 7 as it was traveling along a highway that connects the town of San Fernando with the city of Reynosa. The perpetrators kidnapped 19 people and they have not been seen since.