These are the cartels that capture, extort and torture migrants in 8 Mexican states

PROGRESO, Honduras — Every night, César cleans the manure off his only pair of sneakers. He works at a stable taking care of cows and calves, but he doesn’t get a salary. The owner of the animals pays him with milk, which César sells going house to house. What he earns from the sales, about $5 a day, barely gives him enough to eat.

César, who is being identified only by his first name for fear of retaliation from the cartels, regrets that fate decided his birth in Progreso, Honduras, a village with streets without pavement, drainage or even names.  

“I was born poor. We didn’t even have enough to eat. And 50 years later, I am still poor,” he said. “And so I will surely die, without having something of my own.”

His village is a cradle for both gang members and migrants who go north toward the U.S. for a better way of life. César tried it two years ago, when he wanted to reunite with a brother who has lived in Jacksonville, Florida, for two decades. It almost cost him his life. 

‘The Zetas were going to kill me’

In the early morning of Sept. 20, 2019, César took a backpack and a change of clothes. He said goodbye to his wife and left to meet the coyote, or smuggler, who would cross him through Mexico to reach the U.S.

César gave him his car as the first payment to pay off the first $2,300 he owed. If he managed to cross, he would pay the rest of the money, $5,500. Coyotes in the area charge $6,000 to $8,000, César said.

In Chiapas, Mexico, they took the train known as La Bestia heading north. In Puebla, officials from the National Migration Institute detained some of their colleagues. From that moment on, he traveled alone. 

He crossed the state of Nuevo León and reached Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where he was kidnapped. 

“At the bus terminal, there were some young people who told us that on one side those who had a guide should stand and those who didn’t on the other,” he said. “Those of us who were alone, they put us in a tourist van and took us to a safe house there in Reynosa.”

César and 20 other migrants were kidnapped and held for three weeks in a house that belonged to Los Zetas, the cartel to which his kidnappers belonged — as the migrants were told from the moment they were detained. 

César already knew the reputation of Los Zetas: “I thought day after day, moment after moment since I arrived, that the Zetas were going to kill me, because they have no heart or soul,” he said.

The constantly threatening tone the criminals used confirmed his fears. 

“If your brother wants to see you alive — to refresh his memory — give him a reminder,” César said they told him. “And they pushed me aside and gave me a beating.”

The cartels controlling the territories

Noticias Telemundo Investiga has interviewed more than 30 migrants who report having been kidnapped in different Mexican states by different criminal groups from 2019 to 2021. With these accounts, as well as information provided by sources from the Mexican attorney general’s office and the analysis of two experts on drug cartels, Noticias Telemundo Investiga has drawn up a map of migrant kidnappings in Mexico. 

• In Tamaulipas, Los Zetas operate under the name Cartel del Noreste (Northeast Cartel) and Tropa del Infierno (Troop From Hell). The Gulf Cartel is also present through local gangs, such as Los Metros and Los Golfos.
• In Chiapas, in the south of the country, those who kidnap and extort migrants and their families belong to the Sinaloa Cartel, the Northeast Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, as well as Mara Salvatrucha cells in the area, near Guatemala.
• In Tabasco, a territory that migrants have to traverse because of its proximity to Chiapas, a state that borders Guatemala, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel operates a cell commanded by a criminal nicknamed El Jardinero (The Gardener), according to several migrants’ accounts.
• On the northern border in Tijuana, in the state of Baja California, and in Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel dominate. The latter also controls the border between Sonora and Arizona. 

Interrogating the children

On the third day, César’s kidnappers took him and nine other people out of the Reynosa home across the river to McAllen, Texas. Crossing was very easy, he said.

“They put us on some very nice boats. They seemed luxurious, and there they crossed us,” he said. “Absolutely no one stopped us or told us anything. It seemed that everything was very well organized. With us were five more heavily armed men who were taking care of us.”

In McAllen, they were transferred to a nearby ranch, where 50 other people were already being held. The armed men warned them of the danger if they ran — and if their relatives did not pay the $5,000 ransom.

The criminals, who César said had Mexican accents, locked up the children to interrogate and threaten them. They wanted to know which family members were waiting for them in the U.S. It was a way to confirm that their parents were not lying to them.

“Crying women yelled at armed men, asking why were they taking their children. ‘If you want to know something, ask me,’ they would yell,” César said. “Then the child would come out crying. In his innocence and fear, he told the criminals everything they wanted to know.” 

If the kidnappers discovered that information was false, the migrants were brutally beaten and the women were raped. Everyone was threatened with having fingers cut off if they did not tell the truth.

One night, when the ranch lights were turned off so the migrants could sleep, César escaped through a bathroom window. No one dared to accompany him. Outside, several armed men were guarding the house.

For cartels, ‘the perfect business’

In the last decade, drug cartels operating in Mexico have diversified their illicit businesses. One of the most profitable is irregular migration — the crossing of borders without the necessary documentation.

For researcher Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a specialist in drug trafficking and migration at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, such activities pose few risks for criminal groups because migrants rarely report attacks. 

“They don’t report them because they threaten them if they do so, and they don’t know who to turn to,” Correa-Cabrera said. “Most kidnappers have ties to the authorities, so it’s virtually impossible that they’ll take action against them. It is the perfect business.”

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission uncovered the massive phenomenon of the kidnapping of Central American migrants in the country in 2008, when it recorded 198 kidnappings and 9,857 victims from September 2008 to February 2009.