Juárez police officers arrested in migrant kidnapping 'network of corruption'
Migrants arriving in Juárez with hopes of reaching the U.S. were abducted and held for ransom by a gang of kidnappers allegedly including Juárez municipal police officers, state authorities said.
Migrant trafficking is now believed to be more lucrative — and less risky — than drug trafficking for organized crime groups in the Juárez border region, Chihuahua law enforcement officials said.
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Bryan Fernando H.R. is accused of using his job as a police officer to form "a complex network of corruption" linked to migrant kidnappings in a border city teeming with new arrivals from around the world, the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office said.
Bryan Fernando H.R. was allegedly part of a gang made up of civilians and police officers who kidnapped migrants for ransom, the attorney general's office said in a statement. Two other officers were arrested last summer.
The now former police officer was arrested on March 8 in the coastal city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, by Chihuahua state police investigators working with their counterparts in Sinaloa, officials said.
The ex-policeman faces a charge of aggravated kidnapping in connection with the abduction of 17 migrants of various nationalities held for ransom in March 2023 in the hillside Felipe Angeles neighborhood in western Juárez, across the border from the University of Texas at El Paso.
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He allegedly guarded the kidnapped migrants, threatened them with a gun and demanded ransom payments from their families in exchange for letting them go free, prosecutors said.
Authorities did not disclose the former officer's last name in keeping with rules in Mexico regarding the naming of crime suspects.
Migrants abducted after arrival at Juárez airport
Last June, Chihuahua state police investigators arrested two other Juárez police officers accused of kidnapping recently-arrived migrants.
Saulo D.G. and Juan Manuel R.I. are accused of abducting migrants who had been intercepted while taking an Uber ride after arriving at the Juárez airport, the attorney general's office said.
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Undocumented migrants who fly into the Juárez airport with plans to cross the U.S. border are plump targets for kidnappers because they, or their families, are believed to have more money than the often penniless migrants, many of them Venezuelans, who arrive riding atop freight trains, law enforcement officials have said.
On the evening of May 9, 2023, two migrants had just flown into Juárez from Mexico City and were riding in an Uber when their ride was intercepted and they were abducted by men in a pickup truck in a parking lot on Sanders Avenue, south of downtown Juárez, the attorney general's office said in a statement.
The migrants were held at various houses for 12 days, where they were threatened with a gun, beaten and ordered to provide the telephone numbers of relatives in the United States, prosecutors said. The kidnappers demanded the migrants' relatives pay $30,000 (U.S. dollars) for both of them. The migrants were later freed. It was unclear if the ransom was paid.
Migrant trafficking as lucrative as drugs
The criminal underground of human smuggling is a generations-old along the Texas-Mexico border. It has become increasingly lucrative amid tighter U.S. border security measures and the arrival of growing numbers of irregular migrants from around the globe, authorities said.
"There is an abuse by organized crime that sees in them (migrants) the possibility to bleed them for more money that they already paid to reach the border ... to enter the United States," Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Gustavo Jauregui Moreno said at a news conference in September.
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Migrant trafficking has surpassed drug trafficking in profitability along Mexico's northern border as irregular migration has swelled in the last seven years, Gilberto Loya, the head of the Chihuahua state public safety department, said at a news conference last summer.
Criminal groups view the trafficking of persons as carrying less legal risks than the trafficking of narcotics because of a lack of regulation in Mexico, Loya said.
Carlos Manuel Salas, the state prosecutor for the northern zone of Chihuahua, has said that prosecutors face challenges even when migrant stash houses are discovered.
It’s rare for migrants to want to press charges against the smugglers who are detaining them, Salas said at a December news conference. Migrants usually just want to leave and continue their journey to the U.S. and it’s difficult to get them to cooperate on filing formal charges.
In some cases, the migrants have even defended the alleged traffickers saying they were protecting the migrants from other "narcos," Salas added.
Just as with illicit drugs markets, rival drug cartels and crime organizations are vying for control of the border migrant smuggling rackets. In these cases, the "product" is not narcotics, but people.
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In some cases, drivers for ride-hailing service and smugglers who pick up migrants at the Juárez airport are stopped on streets by members of crime groups, state prosecutors have said. If the driver doesn't have the correct "passcode" showing they have permission to transport, the migrants are forcibly taken. The smuggler could also face abduction, torture and death.
There have been more than 250 homicides in Juárez this year, according to tallies in news reports.
"I can tell you that many of the homicides in Ciudad Juárez are related to the trafficking of persons," Loya said.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Juárez police accused of kidnapping migrants for ransom
