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Migrants kidnapped in U.S. desert
By Deborah Tedford
NOGALES, Mexico (Reuters) - The words packed a punch so intense they knocked Miguel Zarate off his feet, the emotional blow leaving him disoriented and terrified.
"We have your son," hissed a voice on the telephone. "If you want to see him again, do what we say."
An illegal immigrant working as a labourer in Chicago, Zarate first thought it was a mistake. He and his family were not typical of the rich, powerful Mexicans who are wrested from their limousines at gunpoint, or plucked from expensive restaurants.
But it was no mistake.
Mexican migrants in the United States -- and the family members who set out to join them -- are being kidnapped at record rates.
"They are getting so common we are starting to register them," said Alan Hubbard, a protection officer with Mexico's Foreign Ministry based in Phoenix. "They make easy victims."
Every year hundreds of thousands of migrants from Mexico and Central America risk death crossing the treacherous 2,000-mile (3,220 km) U.S.-Mexico border in search of jobs.
The record of the conversation between Zarate, not his real name, and his son's kidnappers came from the growing files kept by Hubbard's office on immigrant kidnap cases.
In the last four years, the number of illegal immigrants kidnapped along the U.S.-Mexico border has risen 12-fold, according to Mexican government statistics.
And just in January, at least 12 Mexican migrants were waylaid during their northward treks into Arizona -- almost half the number kidnapped in all of last year.
Experts said migrants are forced to hire smugglers to guide them into the United States through the desert because of the increased enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in urban areas.
PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS
But by bringing smugglers into the migration equation, immigrants unwittingly expose themselves and their families to danger at the hands of professional criminals, Hubbard said.
The smugglers often turn captors once they are in the United States, confining migrants in "safe houses" with barred windows, bolted doors and surveillance cameras.
In the past, smugglers would prey on naive migrants' fear that immigration officials could catch them on any street corner, holding them in a house while they tried to extort more money out of relatives waiting for the new migrant in another city. Violence was not usually a problem.
But now, threats of violence are often involved. And rival smugglers or local gangs often hijack groups of migrants during their trips northward, then demand ransoms for their release.
Hubbard said the kidnappers are highly professional and organised. "They use prepaid cell phones, so when the family in Mexico calls them they find the phone is registered to George Bush with a fake address," Hubbard said.
So far, California, New Mexico and Texas have escaped the surge in kidnappings because the vast majority of migrants come across the border in Arizona.
But Hubbard said the figures do not accurately represent the kidnappings that actually occur because Mexicans rarely report the crime. Families quietly pay the ransoms if they can, or stoically bury the dead if they can't.
"I'm certain there are many more of them than are reported," Hubbard said. "Most people are afraid to call the police for fear of being deported."
CATCHING KIDNAPPERS
Last year, the bound bodies of eight illegal immigrants were found at different times in the desert near Phoenix and ransom or extortion demands may have been made for at least two victims, officials said.
In an effort to find their killers, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has asked the local Immigration and Naturalisation Service not to deport anyone with information on the killings.
He believes the killings are likely to continue until the guilty are caught.
Recounting the events of the Zarate case from his file, Hubbard said smugglers were hired to take Zarate's wife and two-year-old son from the Mexican state of Sonora to Chicago.
But before the group arrived at the border, the smugglers split up the mother and child, convincing the woman her son would be safer if he did not cross in the desert.
The smugglers took the child to Phoenix, Arizona, by car, then called the father and demanded $1,500.
Zarate was fortunate because weeks before their journey from Mexico, the smugglers had asked him to send them a copy of his son's birth certificate.
"He still had the address," Hubbard said. "I called the police and when they arrived at the house, there was the two-year-old."
Hubbard usually becomes involved when there is a threat of violence. He is now serving as liaison between the families of four victims, all young men from the Mexican state of Durango, and police officers investigating their kidnappings in Phoenix.
The kidnappers have demanded $1,200 for the return of each victim.
"Their wives are very worried," Hubbard said. The captors "say they want money, or they will kill their hostage and dump the body in the desert."
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