Migrants Going North Now Risk Kidnappings

New York Times
By MARC LACEY
Published: October 17, 2009

TECATE, Mexico — For 37 days, the Salvadoran immigrant was held captive in a crowded room near the border with scores of people, all of them Central Americans who had been kidnapped while heading north, hoping to cross into the United States.

He finally got out in August, he said, after the Mexican Army raided the house in the middle of the night to free them.

A Honduran studied a map of Mexico, where foreigners are being kidnapped on their way to the United States.

“The army said: ‘Don’t run. We’re here to help you,’ â€