On August 3, cartel members arrived at a shelter in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, demanding that the pastor in charge hand over a group of Cubans to be ransomed; when he refused, he was abducted, never to be seen again. Later in the summer, a few miles away, a dozen asylum seekers who’d just been returned to Mexico were kidnapped. “The people in migration”—Mexican immigration authorities—“turned us over to the cartels,” one of the victims later told Vice News. “They know what they are doing. They don’t care if you’re killed or not.”
