On Friday, four friends from South Carolina crossed the border from Brownsville, Texas into Mothamoros, Mexico. Kevin Ceefe is the Mexico City Bureau Chief in the post. And he's been covering the kidnapping of four Americans who crossed the border into Mexico late last week.
Not long after crossing the border, they were confronted by a group of armed men, shot at and then forced into a pickup truck in Kiddent. And that was all captured on a video taken by a bystander. We saw it happen before we knew what happened to these friends.
And after they disappeared, this enormous manhunt began. This incident has raised questions about the security relationship between the US and Mexico. In the role the US has played in making Mothamoros a place for criminal gangs Kiddent people, often with impunity.
From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Arjun Seng. I'll be your guest host today. Today, Kevin and I talk about what happened with this group of Americans who are Kiddent in Mexico and the reactions on both sides of the border.
So what do we know about what happened to these four Americans?
那么我们对这四位美国人发生的事情了解多少呢?
After the kidnapping on Friday, a massive manhunt was set off. You had intelligence coming from the US and Mexican security forces with the Mexican army, Mexican police, just driving around throughout the northeastern state of Tamil. They eventually found them in a small wooden house next to a lagoon in the middle of sort of no man's land surrounded by farmlands. And at the moment that they were found, two of them had already died. The other two were taken immediately across the border to Brownsville where they got medical treatment. And the bodies of the two victims were sent to a hospital in Mexico where they were reviewed by forensic scientists.
And how commonplace are kidnappings like these in this part of Mexico?
在这个墨西哥地区,绑架案件像这样有多普遍?请用像中文母语者那样的语言进行翻译。
So they're incredibly common. What's uncommon about this is that it happened to American citizens. That is not common. People get kidnapped in northeastern Mexico all the time. Often it's migrants who are targeted for ransom. Sometimes it's Mexicans who are targeted because of some tension between armed groups. But usually organized criminals in Mexico are very careful not to target Americans because they know if they do, it could draw the eye of the US government, which is, of course, exactly what has happened in this case.
And can you tell me a little bit more about who these people were? And do we have an idea of what they were doing in Mexico and why they seem to have been targeted by a cartel?
你可以再给我多讲讲这些人是谁吗?他们在墨西哥做了些什么,为什么会被贩毒集团盯上呢?
Yeah, that's the big question. So these were four friends from South Carolina who came to Mexico for elective surgery. One of them had a scheduled elective surgery and the other three came to sort of accompany her to drive her. And this is really common, right? Like Americans cross the border all the time for dentist appointments, for appointments with doctors, for the kind of surgery like the one that this person had scheduled in Montamoros, Mexican doctors know that there are Americans who, mostly for financial reasons, don't seek treatment in the US and prefer to seek it in Mexico.
And so they set up shop just along the border. As soon as you drive across the border into Montamoros, for example, you see signs in English, advertising, dentist offices, advertising, offices of other doctors. And that's true of basically every Mexican border city now. So certainly this is the kind of thing that happens all the time with Americans driving into Mexico or flying into Mexico, depending on where they live, to see doctors.
So that idea of driving, even from South Carolina to Mexico, isn't a crazy thing. It happens all the time, in part because medical procedures are just so much cheaper in Mexico. And especially if it's something that's not covered by insurance, that drive could make financial sense. So that's why the group of friends drove into Mexico.
What we understand is that the trip came together pretty quickly. And potentially this is a group of people who didn't look that closely at the danger opposed in the city, the specific city where they were driving. The US Mexico border is an incredibly varied place. And there are some cities that are really very safe. And there are others like Montamoros or other cities in the state of the Mexican state of Tamolipas, where kidnapping is pretty common. And this group of friends ended up in a city where kidnapping does happen. Armed groups do have significant control. And we're the state department for years has warned Americans against traveling. And so those are things that potentially this group of friends did not know.
And then what happened to them, I think, is just remarkably unlucky. We still don't know exactly why they were targeted.
然后他们发生了什么事情,我认为只是非常不幸。我们仍然不确定他们被选中的原因。
One of the victim's relatives told us that the FBI told her that they were mispotentially mistaken for Haitian migrants.
受害者的亲属告诉我们,FBI告诉她,他们可能被错误地认定为海地移民。
And migrants are frequently targeted in this city as a source of revenue for drug cartels. They're held for ransom for two or three days.. And so that potentially is what happens.
There's another sort of theory that they were potentially caught in a crossfire between armed groups. That to me seems increasingly unlikely, given that Montamoros is largely controlled by a single group. And these days are not that many confrontations. But basically, we just don't know.
And the incident itself, even though we so well documented in the video, we don't know what led to it. We don't know why an armed group would have targeted for Americans this way.
So US immigration policy over the last six years or so has forced asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border.
过去六年来,美国的移民政策强制寻求庇护者在墨西哥边境等待。
So this started under the Trump administration and it's largely continued under the Biden administration.
这个问题始于特朗普政府时期,而现在在拜登政府时期仍然持续存在。
And what that has meant is that you have a large group, in many cases thousands of people in relatively dangerous cities on the Mexican side of the border, many of them just sleeping on the streets.
And so armed groups see this as a potential revenue stream. They kidnap migrants and often they're looking for people who might have relatives in the US. And then they ask for ransom payments of several thousand dollars.
This really picked up under the Trump administration when the policy of MPP or what's known as remain in Mexico began and asylum seekers were asked to remain in Mexico while they waited for their US court dates.
And it's continued under the Biden administration, which is implemented this title 42 policy forcing asylum seekers to wait on the US side of the border.
这个政策在拜登政府下继续实行,他们实施了第42号政策,强制寻求庇护者在美国边境等候。
And I think it's important to step back and say that we think of drug cartels as organizations that get most of their revenue from drug trafficking.
我觉得重要的是要退一步思考,我们认为毒品贩卖团伙主要是从毒品交易中获得大部分收入的组织。
And that is mostly true. But kidnapping is an enormous source of revenue for these groups, especially in a place like Mothamoros.
那大部分是正确的。但在像莫萨莫罗斯这样的地方,绑架是这些团伙巨大的收入来源。
And so when migrants began these large groups of migrants started forming at the border, it was really a gift to these cartels. And that has remained true for now for about seven years.
Is the Biden administration in the Department of Homeland Security aware that US policies may be exacerbating this problem?
拜登政府的国土安全部是否意识到美国的政策可能会加剧这个问题呢?
I think they must be. This is sort of the sad irony of the situation right where we've seen a lot of comment and action from the Biden administration in the last few days on this particular group of Americans being kidnapped.
But the administration knows that hundreds, if not thousands, of migrants have been kidnapped in Mothamoros or cities like Mothamoros under US policy. It's just that those are not US citizens. And so they don't require or they don't bring about US action when those people disappear.
And so given the proximity of the two countries, the amount of travel between them and then the dangers that we've been discussing, how do the United States and Mexican governments work together on these issues or do they work together on security issues involving kidnappings of tourists?
Mexico as a country has struggled with violence and insecurity for a long time.
作为一个国家,墨西哥长期以来一直在与暴力和不安全性进行斗争。
There have been more than 30,000 homicides a year over the last five years, which is a lot for a country of Mexico's size.
在过去的五年中,每年发生超过3万起谋杀案,对于墨西哥这样一个国家来说是相当多的。
There are 100,000 more than 100,000 people in Mexico who are currently disappeared. No one knows where they are. Their mass graves found pretty frequently in Mexico and people searching for their loved ones all around the country.
And so it's no surprise to see the Mexican government or the US government that something like this I A kidnapping could happen or that a homicide could happen. What's uncommon is that we're talking about American citizens here because again, Mexican armed groups are so usually so asciduous about avoiding targeting Americans knowing what it could mean for them.
And so when something like this happens, it's a much different dynamic than it is when a Mexican person is kidnapped or when a Mexican person is killed.
所以,当发生这样的事情时,情况与墨西哥人被绑架或被杀害时的情况完全不同。
All of a sudden you have, in this case, for example, the FBI offering a $50,000 reward, you have like all of these different elements of the Mexican security forces that are dispatched to places where they don't normally go looking for people who have been abducted.
It is a much different experience to watch the reaction of the Mexican government and the reaction of the US government when an American is hurt in Mexico than when a Mexican person is.
And so that's what we saw over the weekend. We saw a really significant man hunt 72 hours later resulted in a half successful rescue effort.
所以这就是我们周末看到的。我们目睹了一场非常重要的人类搜索行动,72小时后有一个半成功的营救行动。
Yeah. I mean, Kevin, the numbers you just laid out are pretty astonishing to hear. And I'm curious if you have a sense of how people inside of Mexico feel when they see all of these resources and this wide manhunt happening for Americans that it sounds like isn't necessarily the case when it happens to Mexican citizens.
It was an interesting thing to watch yesterday. There's frustration in some ways with like, okay, well, we see what the Mexican government is capable of doing when they're, you know, when they're prompted by the US to react, you know, when they need to find someone in rural Mexico quickly.
We know that they can do it because we saw them do it. We saw them do it yesterday. So why don't they do it in the case of, you know, my nephew who's been missing for two years or, you know, my son or my husband who's been missing for 10 years. Those were questions that we saw a lot of people ask yesterday and there are reasonable questions.
And then I think, you know, there's another reaction to Mexico, which is a sort of embarrassment that, you know, this could happen in their country that, you know, someone crossing the border seemingly for, you know, a very innocent reason could end up very quickly being shot at and kidnapped. They see it as a poor reflection on the state of security in their country. And so I think it's all of those things kind of woven together.
After the break, we talked about what the response to this incident has been from the US and Mexican governments. We'll be right back.
休息之后,我们讨论了美国和墨西哥政府对这起事件做出的反应。我们马上回来。
Has the Mexican president, Andreus Manuel Lopez, Obrador, said anything about this situation?
墨西哥总统安德烈斯·曼努埃尔·洛佩斯·奥夫拉多尔有没有对这种情况发表过言论?
He did. I mean, I think he's in a complicated position because of course he's now under enormous pressure from the US to do something. Even now in the wake of the rescue effort, there's pressure on him to crack down on the kind of insecurity that led to this.
And so he said, you know, the Mexican government will conduct a thorough investigation. They'll do all the things that the US government wants it to do. But then he kind of added a line or a couple of lines saying, like, well, you know, I don't see this kind of attention when a Mexican person is killed in the US. He said that, you know, media, when that happens, they just are there.
Their mouths are shut like mummies, he said. He also added something like, you know, he's happy to work with the US to try to work on the certain insecurity that led to this situation. But he's very, he's very insistent that they not intervene in Mexican affairs. He will draw a line between collaboration and intervention.
What has the US government said, like, his president Biden said anything publicly about this and are they putting some pressure on the Mexican government over this? How are they interacting with each other?
Yeah, the White House, like over the last couple of days has said that, you know, they are concerned about the situation that it's an unacceptable crime to occur to, you know, to happen to Americans in Mexico. Because on US citizens are unacceptable, no matter where or under what circumstances they happen, we will continue to work closely with the Mexican government to ensure justice is done in this case. And we have imposed.
So I think what we're seeing now is like probably the beginning of a process that will result in probably the detention of a number of people in Mexico. What will it change the security dynamic in a place like Matamoros? I think that's unlikely. And frankly, like this kind of cycle of an attack on an American in Mexico, a US government response that prompts a Mexican government response, this happens pretty frequently.
I mean, this happens, I would say, like every year or two. And it's always very tragic. Something happens to an American in a different part of Mexico. And it is one of the only times we really hear the US government talk about insecurity in Mexico decoupled from drug trafficking, for example. And we usually then see a Mexican government response that is unlike the way that the Mexican government responds normally to violence. And then it's followed normally by a period of nothingness until the next incident happens.
Has the US government ever acknowledged the fact that so many Americans are traveling across the border to receive more affordable health care?
美国政府有没有承认这样一个事实,就是许多美国人跨越边境去接受更为实惠的医疗保健服务呢?
It's not a thing that the US government ever really talks about, although it's very clear when you're on the border that it's an important industry. I mean, I think, you know, beyond this sort of like indictment on the US health care system, it does also show like just how integrated the US and Mexico are, especially in the border area, where you have, you know, every day thousands of people crossing in either direction.
Americans crossing into Mexico to go see a dentist and Mexicans crossing into the US to work or to go to school or any number of other reasons to go to the mall. And that, you know, that has been like the history of Brownsville and Matamoros for many years..
I mean, they call each other sister cities a week or two before this kidnapping. They just had their enormous cross border festival with a huge parade. And so yeah, like seeking medical care in Mexico is now sort of a very American thing to do. But it also really speaks to like just how integrated these two countries in this case, these two cities really are.
Kevin, I know that you're based in Mexico and I'm very curious because on one hand, you have laid out how these kinds of kidnappings can be fairly frequent. But also you had described the vibe of Montenores people are going across getting lunch, having medical appointments. How does this sort of an incident and this kind of violence characterize day to day life in Mexico? Is it something that feels omnipresent or how are Mexicans grappling with it?
Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question. And I think that people hear these stories and they're often some of the only stories that people hear about Mexico. So that plus the way that Mexico is often portrayed in film and television leaves a lot of Americans with the impression that it is a place where your chances of being kidnapped or shot as soon as you cross the border are high. And that is not the case.
It's not the case even in a place like Montenores which has the State Department security warning which has the presence of organized crime. It's still a place where life is lived. It's a place where it's vibrant. It feels very safe. 99.9% of the time you can walk around as an American or Mexican without any issues.
And again, I was there the day before this kidnapping I spent a week there. And I remember we were marking to friends like this city feels actually like it's really in a pretty good place now. It feels like security has improved dramatically. And my friends who live on either side of that border agreed with me. It felt to them like things were really coming together after a couple of pretty dark years. And so for this to happen as it seemed that security was improving of course is really a real shock. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a city that is only characterized by violence.
You know, it's also a city characterized by really good tacos and really good people. It is a city of almost a million people that feels like almost any other city of almost a million people in a lot of ways. And this incident doesn't change that.
If you're looking for the latest updates on this story and all the other big news of the day, check out our Morning Briefing News podcast, The Seven. It's hosted by my friend and colleague, Jeff Pierre, and he brings you through the seven stories you need to know about every weekday morning by 7 a.m. So you can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts.