2009, The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- Ulises Martinez received the first call on a cold January morning, a stern voice shocking him through his cellphone. His in-laws had been taken hostage after a grueling border crossing from the Mexican desert into Arizona. Martinez would have to pay $3,000 to secure their release. 'I am not responsible for what will happen to them if you do not pay the money,' the voice said. He would dismember the in-laws and dump them in the desert if Martinez didn't pay up. It was $3,000 Martinez, a 40-year-old Alexandria, Va., mechanic with a wife and toddler, didn't have and couldn't get. As demands quickly increased to $5,400, Martinez's in-laws cowered in their underwear in a dark, squalid room in Phoenix, Ariz., and were told that their fingers would be cut off and their organs harvested if the cartel's demands weren't met. Desperate and confused, Martinez, himself an undocumented immigrant, called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Washington area, touching off an intense federal investigation. It was one of dozens of such search-and-rescue missions spurred by similar menacing calls over the past year. As U.S. control of the border has strengthened since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it has become harder for people to cross illegally. That has spawned a boom in hostage-taking as smuggling cartels have realized that they can extort money from illegal immigrants' families in the United States, many of whom wire the ransom instead of risking their own deportation by contacting police. Although the cartels hold captives in the southwest border states, the crimes have reached into the regions where established immigrant communities include undocumented people who left their families behind in Central America. The kidnappers prey on working-class, Spanish-speaking immigrants because they are especially vulnerable: They would do almost anything to free their loved ones, and they are sometimes equally fearful of U.S. authorities. A recent Virginia case, involving victims who received extortion calls in Alexandria, highlight how reporting such crimes can lead to daring rescues. ICE officials and local police hope the cases encourage others receiving extortion calls to come forward, both to save lives and to help them make inroads into the sprawling criminal organizations. 'Nobody deserves to be held against their will, regardless of their immigration status,' said James Dinkins, special agent in charge of ICE investigations in Washington, D.C. and Virginia. 'Nobody deserves to be abused or tortured or to have their life threatened. ... The hostage takers must think the loved ones aren't going to call the cops.' The extortion demands -- which also have been reported in places including Washington state, California, Illinois and Florida -- have led ICE agents to work with victims to record and trace the calls. Officials estimate that more than 1,000 captives have been rescued in raids after victims such as Martinez come forward. But ICE officials say countless other kidnappings have gone unreported as victims quietly pay millions of dollars in ransom. Hostage rescues have become almost a weekly occurrence on the southern U.S. border, according to ICE officials and police. ICE agents have been discovering an increasing number of 'drop houses' in Arizona and Texas linked to complex human smuggling operations that they say are similar to violent Mexican drug and weapons cartels. 'Human smugglers think nothing of engaging in hostage taking and extortion to generate more profit for their illegal activities,' said John Morton, Homeland Security assistant secretary for ICE. Even Martinez, as desperate as he was, never intended to call ICE. He called an immigration advocacy group, which passed along a phone number that turned out to be ICE. Ultimately, he realized it might be the only way to save his wife's parents, whom he had heard crying and begging in one of numerous tense cellphone conversations with their armed captors. ICE agents working at their Prosperity Avenue offices in Fairfax County were able to trace the calls to a house in west Phoenix within hours of Martinez's coming forward Jan. 9. Local and federal authorities raided the house 2,400 miles away 34 hours later, freeing 21 immigrant hostages -- including Martinez's in-laws. They were sent back to El Salvador. 'It's better to be deported alive than to be dead and dropped in the desert,' Martinez said in Spanish in a recent interview, sitting with his wife, Teresa, and son, Alexis. 'If I didn't call, maybe they would have killed them, and it would have been my fault.' As Martinez was receiving the extortion calls in January, his in-laws, Walter Flores, 42, and Sonia Maribel Valdez-Navas, 47, were squatting in the corner of a crowded and stinking bedroom at 8821 W. Palm Lane in Phoenix. The windows were covered with plywood, the hostages were stripped of their clothes, shoes and belts, and talk of escape was wistful and unrealistic. A guard flashed a 9mm handgun. 'They said terrible things,' Valdez-Navas said in Spanish from El Salvador. 'I worried a lot. I cried a lot. I didn't eat. They said if they didn't get the money, they would take out our organs and sell them. I cried a lot.' Valdez-Navas and her husband had made their way to the United States via Mexico on a journey to the Washington area to meet their grandson. They earned enough money in Mexicali to pay for what they expected would be a $1,500 trip. After walking in the desert for three days and crossing into Arizona near the dusty town of Sasabe, they were rushed to a U.S. highway and shoved in the back of a vehicle before arriving at the Phoenix house. 'They sold us like chickens,' she said. She and her husband were in a room with about 10 other hostages, occasionally eating soup and sleeping on a dingy gray carpet. Officials said hostages are treated like any other illicit commodity. Some are sold or bartered between groups, even stolen by rivals in carjackings and raids, according to federal court records. Martinez said he spoke to multiple callers demanding money and said he would have paid if he could have. Court records and interviews show the terror extending across the country after the captors demand phone numbers of relatives. Often, the calls include hostages pleading for help or being tortured. 'We've had everything from people taking a brick and smashing the hostages' hands to tying them up with barbed wire to using a car battery to administer electrical shocks to get the relatives to bring the money,' said Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris. 'And the conditions in these houses are absolutely atrocious. People are dehydrated, they're tied up, they're beaten.' Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of ICE investigations in Phoenix, said his office gets 40 to 50 referrals a year for such cases. Some of the houses he's raided have as many as 100 hostages crammed inside. 'We get these calls from all over the country,' Allen said. 'We see this as something we need to deal with urgently. There are victims out there that we need to find.' Allen's office worked on 40 hostage cases in fiscal 2008 alone, rescuing 584 people from their captors in Arizona, according to ICE data. From October 2006 through June, ICE handled 6,157 human smuggling cases resulting in 3,596 criminal convictions and seizures of more than $34 million. ICE does not compile national data on hostage cases. Although ICE officials recognize that everyone involved -- the immigrants and the kidnappers -- have broken the law, they say they want to save lives first and sort out immigration status second. Allen said the victims are part of the criminal conspiracy, 'but at the same time, most of them didn't sign up for what ended up happening.' 'The victims are universally grateful,' Allen said, adding that most are removed from the country but some remain to testify in court or assist investigations. In Martinez's case, authorities arrested six men in a nighttime raid on the house in west Phoenix, recovering a Browning 9mm handgun and ledgers cataloguing smuggling activity. Six were convicted in U.S. District Court in Arizona and are serving sentences ranging from 24 to 46 months. Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report. 