Thirty-one migrants have been rescued after masked gunmen kidnapped them from a bus heading to the Texas border, Mexican authorities said Wednesday.
Presidential spokesperson Jesús Ramírez said in a post on X that the military and National Guard helped carry out the rescue operation. He said the migrants were in the custody of authorities and were undergoing medical examinations.
Mexico's Interior Minister Luisa Alcalde also confirmed the rescue operation, but did not provide details about where or how it took place.
Authorities did not immediately provide details about the armed group that carried out the abductions or the migrants who were rescued.
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On Wednesday, some of the migrants kidnapped in Mexico's northern state of Tamaulipas turned up after being rescued by authorities. (Jesus Ramírez Cuevas/President of Mexico)
Federal Security Secretary Rosa Isela Rodríguez said Wednesday that a bus carrying 36 people was intercepted near Rio Bravo on Saturday on a highway connecting the border city of Reynosa and Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. Announced.
The 31 abducted migrants were on a bus bound for the Texas border. (Jesus Ramírez Cuevas/President of Mexico)
Rodriguez said the gunmen forced all the migrants off the bus and abducted 31 of them in five vehicles. The abducted migrants were from Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras and Mexico.
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Rodriguez said the search for the abducted migrants included tracking cell phones, reviewing surveillance video from buses and conducting air searches of the area by helicopter.
Mexican authorities outside a bus in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. (Jesus Ramírez Cuevas/President of Mexico)
Organized crime groups that control border areas regularly kidnap migrants and hold them for ransom, and Tamaulipas state has experienced large-scale kidnappings before.
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In March 2019, 22 people were taken from a bus and went missing. The Zetas cartel also massacred 72 Central American migrants who were taken off a bus near San Fernando, Tamaulipas in 2010.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
