Immigrants from Mexico and Central America at Risk of Kidnapping

If it wasn't bad enough, immigrants traveling north from Central America and Mexico are now at risk of kidnapping and murder. New York Times.

"A study by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission released this year found 9,758 migrants who had been kidnapped as they tried to cross the border into the United States between September 2008 and February 2009. The commission noted that migrants were typically terrified to report such crimes out of fear of being deported by Mexican immigration authorities and that the actual number of victims was probably much higher.
The stories the commission heard in interviews with victims were alarming. There were frequent rapes of female migrants. Fierce beatings were carried out. As a lesson to other captives, the kidnappers killed some migrants who did not hand over the telephone numbers of their relatives.
“They said that if they did not receive payment, they would take away my kidney afterward and throw me into the river so the big lizards would eat me,” a Honduran man who was kidnapped in Tabasco State told commission investigators. "