The US embassy and consulates in Mexico warned staff to avoid downtown Matamoros. On the day of the kidnappings, Tamaulipas authorities issued a warning to parents to keep their children home from school in Matamoros because of shootings. The US State Department in October issued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for US citizens visiting Tamaulipas, citing gun battles, kidnapping and forced disappearances. Matamoros, with a population of more than 500,000 people, sits just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. She had surgery across the border two or three years ago, Barbara Burgess said. The trip was Washington McGee’s second to Mexico for a medical procedure, according to her mother. “I know her,” said Washington McGee’s best friend, Cheryl Orange, who traveled with the group from South Carolina to Texas on March 2 but stayed behind because she did not have proper identification to cross the border. Matamoros is in the northeast state of Tamaulipas, where an explosion of homicides, kidnappings and disappearances rarely make international news. It’s unclear how much the friends in the rented minivan knew about the crime-ridden border city, where factions of the powerful Gulf cartel have been warring for turf, along with control of human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion rackets. The conflict has claimed the lives of thousands of Mexicans, from innocent bystanders to journalists to government officials and political candidates. The four Americans that Friday morning drove into a country where authorities have struggled for small victories in a long and deadly battle against drug cartels. A sixth man, who authorities said had been guarding the hostages, was arrested when the Americans were found on Tuesday. A day earlier, the Gulf cartel purportedly issued a letter of apology and handed over five members to local authorities, according to online images and a version of the letter obtained by CNN from an official familiar with the ongoing investigation. It doesn’t happen with Mexicans, particularly in that state.”īy Friday, a week after the kidnappings, Mexican authorities announced that five people had been arrested for the attack. “If they were Mexicans this would not have happened with such speed,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an expert on smuggling who is a professor at George Mason University and has lived and worked in near Brownsville border, said of the rescue.
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