MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican security forces are searching for about 50 migrants who were kidnapped from a commercial bus, authorities said Wednesday.
The kidnapping took place in the central state of San Luis Potosi, the Attorney General’s Office there said. The bus, whose two drivers were also missing, was discovered further north in the border state of Nuevo Leon on Tuesday, it added, without specifying when the incident took place.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told a press conference the National Guard has been deployed to try to locate the migrants.
On Tuesday, Nuevo Leon’s security agency tweeted that nine migrants – aged from 18 to 35 and from Honduras and Venezuela – had been rescued.
The San Luis Potosi Attorney General’s Office said it was verifying whether the nine were part of the larger group that was kidnapped.
San Luis Potosi has seen a growth in the involvement of organized crime in the trafficking of migrants, increasing numbers of whom are crossing through on their way to the United States, fueled by the recent withdrawal of a COVID-era border policy that allowed U.S. authorities to swiftly expel many migrants.
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz and Raul Cortes Fernandez, Writing by Jackie Botts; editing by John Stonestreet)
