Carolina feared she would have to call her family in Venezuela and urge them to pay $2,000 ransom when her captors arrived at daybreak to remove her from the stash house in the Mexican border city of Reynosa in late May.
According to Reuters’ reporting, one of the men pushed her onto a broken-down bus parked outside and sexually assaulted her. The tragedy that Carolina experienced was “the worst thing that could ever happen to a person,” she claimed.
Under the condition of anonymity for reasons of safety, a migrant advocate who helped Carolina following the kidnapping confirmed every detail of her account to Reuters.
According to data from the Mexican government and humanitarian groups, as well as interviews with eight sexual assault survivors and more than a dozen local aid workers, the attack coincided with an increase in sexual violence against migrants in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, both major transit routes for immigrants seeking to enter the United States.
In response to questions concerning the increase in reported rapes, US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Luis Miranda said, “The inhumane way smugglers abuse, extort, and perpetrate violence against migrants for profit is criminal and morally reprehensible.”
Reuters got state statistics from 2014-2023 via freedom of information requests, and this year saw the highest number of criminal investigations into the rape of non-Americans in the two cities.
Both communities are in the state of Tamaulipas, which the United States Department of State ranks as the most hazardous along the whole United States–Mexico border.
“The Torture Method”
US President Joe Biden’s administration implemented a new system in May that required migrants to secure an appointment — using an app called CBP One — to show themselves at a legitimate border crossing in order to enter the United States, in response to record-high illegal border crossings.
According to nine experts cited by Reuters, the new method has resulted in unforeseen repercussions in the two cities, including a rise in violent crime.
Migrants are pushed to enter illegally, according to four campaigners, because of the high risk of kidnapping and sexual assault in Reynosa and Matamoros. September saw a nationwide increase in border crossings.
The new CBP policy is more compassionate, according to the Biden administration, because it eliminates the incentive for migrants to pay smugglers and criminal groups to help them cross the border illegally.
According to the experts, a growing number of people seeking asylum are attempting to cross the border alone, without paying smugglers to do so.
However, analysts warn that criminal organisations are still asking for money from migrants in order to access their territory.
Bertha Bermdez Tapia, a sociologist at New Mexico State University studying the effects of Biden’s strategy on migrants in Tamaulipas, has remarked, “Rape is part of the torture process to get the money.”
Security experts claim that kidnappings of migrants for ransom are commonplace in the area, and that the Gulf Cartel and the Northeast Cartel are both participating. Reuters was unable to get in touch with either organisation.
Some migrants are also waiting longer in the risky area to get an appointment using the app. According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), every day tens of thousands of people apply for only 1,450 available visa stamping slots.
A high-ranking CBP official in Washington, DC, expressed concern over claims of sexual assaults against migrants in those two locations.
“It’s absolutely something that we’re concerned about,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic being discussed.
Nuevo Laredo, another border city in Tamaulipas, had its CBP One appointments temporarily banned in June owing to “extortion and kidnapping concerns,” according to an official.
But DHS Spokesperson Miranda claimed that under the current administration’s regulations, migrants didn’t need to wait at the border because they could schedule an appointment from other parts of Central and Northern Mexico.
According to CBP data, over 250,000 migrants have made appointments through the CBP One app, while over 200,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have entered the United States through flight under a separate Biden humanitarian programme.
Simply, “Take Her.”
Carolina claimed that she and her son, then 13 years old, rode a commercial bus to Reynosa on the evening of May 26. She claimed that men had been following them from the moment they stepped foot in the bus terminal.
“They said we couldn’t be there without their permission,” she stated from Chicago.
The US Department of State issues a warning about criminal gangs in Tamaulipas hijacking buses “often taking passengers and demanding ransom payments.”
Carolina claims that she and other migrants were taken by the guys and raped at a residence.
She said that her loved ones paid a $3,100 ransom to get her released. The payment could not be confirmed by Reuters on its own. She decided not to notify law enforcement because she felt it was unnecessary.
During her time in captivity in Reynosa, an Ecuadorian woman said that her captors frequently consented to her rape by a drug dealer in exchange for his deliveries of a white powder that she believed to be cocaine.
She escaped her kidnappers one night by sneaking by them while holding her Christ Child doll. “I still have nightmares,” she stated in August from New Jersey.
At their request, Reuters is not publishing the complete identities of the survivors. Reuters verified the information provided by survivors, lawyers, and advocates by reviewing medical and psychological assessments, criminal charges, legal statements, bank records, images, and videos.
In the first half of 2023, the state attorney general’s office opened seven rape investigations involving international women. Only in the month of June did four appear.
A Honduran lady told Reuters that she was raped in a migrant camp in Matamoros in late May, but she was the only survivor to report the incident to police. According to official reports, no one has been detained.
Human rights commission chief in Tamaulipas, Olivia Lemus, claimed official data only shows a small percentage of the actual instances. “Migrants are afraid to file reports,” Lemus stated. The lack of reporting should not be used as evidence that the crime is not being committed.
Questions about sexual violence against migrants were not answered by the Mexican migration agency, the security agency for the state of Tamaulipas, or the Mexican foreign ministry.
The director of Tamaulipas’s migratory services, Juan Rodriguez, has called his organisation “attentive” to the problem.
“Regrettably, occasionally things occur. There’s no denying it.
A Venezuelan asylum seeker claimed that he was kidnapped by a cartel in May while on his way to the border for a scheduled CBP One interview. He said he had to work for two months to raise the remaining $200 of the $800 ransom.
The man’s story of being forced to work against his will and hearing women migrants being raped was corroborated by two other migrants who claimed to have been held at the house around the same time.
The Venezuelan man claimed that he witnessed cartel members asking the man in charge of the residence for permission to rape the women of their choosing on the evenings he was assigned to stand guard over the other migrants.
