Stephanie Jackter - 3-13-2003 at 01:38 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20030313-9999_6m13...
March 13, 2003
TIJUANA ? Twenty-three Mexican migrants who hoped to cross into the United States were held hostage for four days by people posing as smugglers,
police said.
On Tuesday, Baja California state police arrested five people and confiscated two high-caliber weapons after raiding a house where the migrants were
held.
Mexican police rescue 23 migrants locked in house for five days
The migrants, who had traveled to Tijuana from the states of Michoacan and Jalisco, included a woman and 14-month-old child. They were found hungry
and thirsty, and two had been beaten.
The migrants arrived in Tijuana on Friday. While staying at a hotel, they were apparently approached by a group of people who offered to take them to
the United States.
The migrants were blindfolded and placed in a locked truck "so as to simulate that they were crossing the border, making them believe that they had
reached the United States," according to a press release from the Baja California Attorney General's Office.
Instead, the migrants were taken to a house in Colonia Guaycura while the suspects tried to collect ransom money from the migrants' family members in
the United States, state officials said.
Information on the ransom amount wasn't available yesterday from the Attorney General's Office, but a Tijuana newspaper reported the suspects had
demanded at least $1,800 per victim.
State police were tipped off about the migrants' plight by an anonymous phone call from someone who noticed strange activities at the house.
The five suspects, who face firearms and kidnapping charges, were identified as Antonio Iturbide de la Riva, 27; Antonio Armenta Cordero, 30;
Ermelando Lara Trist?n, 30; Lorenzo Pedro Gonz?lez Pineda, 27; and Lorenzo Ortega Rivera, 39.
Once the migrants have given their testimony, "they are free to go because they haven't committed any crime here," said Hamlet Alcantara, a spokesman
for the Baja California Attorney General's Office.