The killing of Americans in a Mexican border city highlights a sinister trend that US policies are making worse

• Four Americans were abducted in Mexico this month in an incident that left two of them and a bystander dead.
• The city where the incident happened, Matamoros, is a gathering place for migrants seeking to enter the US.
• The incident and others like it highlight the vulnerability that thousands of migrants now face.

The March 3 abduction of four Americans in the Mexican city of Matamoros, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas, was not the first such crime by Grupo Escorpiones, an armed branch of the Gulf Cartel.

Weeks earlier, the group kidnapped and held for ransom a family of five that it learned had tried to cross the Rio Grande without paying the "cuota," an extortion fee the cartel demands from anyone looking to enter the US.

The difference was that the people kidnapped on March 3 were not migrants but four Americans traveling to Mexico for a cosmetic procedure. The abduction left two of the Americans and a Mexican bystander dead.

Initial reports indicated that authorities suspected that the four kidnapped Americans had been confused for Haitian migrants, whose numbers in Matamoros have increased in recent weeks.

The incident sparked strong reactions in the US and an unusually swift response from the Mexican government. It also revealed an overlooked trend: the extreme vulnerability of the thousands of migrants who have been stuck in Mexican border towns for the past three years.

A growing number of migrants have entered Mexico in recent years with the goal of reaching the US. Many come from countries in Central America, but increasing numbers are traveling from South America, the Caribbean, and more distant regions. For many, the journey has been halted by immigration restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, some pandemic-related, which the Biden administration has largely maintained.

As thousands of migrants huddle along the US-Mexico border waiting for their immigration processes to play out, cartels are preying on the new and vulnerable population.

"We feel like we are being kidnapped inside this city," Fedler Dominic, an Haitian migrant in Matamoros, told Insider in a phone interview. "We can't get across because we need to wait, but we also can't leave because we could get kidnapped or forced by" members of the Gulf Cartel "to do things we don't want to do."

Dominic lives in an encampment right next to the Rio Grande along with other 7,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, Haiti, and Cuba, according to official figures.

The encampment has grown each month for at least two years after the US blocked admissions under Title 42, a longstanding law that the Trump administration invoked during the pandemic to stop and expel migrants seeking asylum. Title 42 is now set to be lifted on May 11.

Mexican criminal organizations have forced several migrants at the camp to work for them, either by selling drugs on the street or running human-smuggling rings.

"One of the most urgent vulnerabilities migrants are facing today in Matamoros is the fact that they are forced to stay in empty lots or on the riverside, exposing them to diseases but also to criminal organizations," Glady Cañas, a pro-migrant activist, told Insider.

Cañas said that the first few months of 2023 have been even worse for migrants in the city than 2018, when many migrants congregated in improvised tents waiting for a chance to cross the border.

"Migrants are being extorted, threatened, and kidnapped even by the same local authorities," Cañas said.

In April 2022, three migrants, including a man from Peru, were kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo, another border city. They were abducted as they headed to a local shelter only hours after being expelled by US authorities under Title 42, according to reports at the time. They had to pay several thousand dollars to be freed and later told authorities there were 20 other kidnapped migrants at the house where they were held.

"You can't basically move from the camp," Manuel Velázquez, a Cuban migrant in Matamoros, told Insider. "No one wants to even go to the corner store to get food or water, because those people are out there just preying on us, especially men," Velázquez said, referring to cartel members.

Velázquez said that earlier this year two men approached him and asked if he wanted "to make some money" by giving them information about other migrants in the encampment.

"They wanted me to snitch when other migrants tried to cross or if they were planning on leaving the camp or buying drugs, that kind of stuff. Of course I said no very respectfully," Velázquez said.

The state of Tamaulipas, where Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo are located, has had high levels of violent crime, especially against migrants, for years. The situation has only worsened with the influx of migrants. In 2021, the state was among the worst in Mexico in terms of migrant kidnappings and human trafficking, according to official figures.

Matamoros is less violent than other Mexican cities, likely because it is mostly controlled by a single group, the Gulf Cartel, though competing factions within the cartel are responsible for violence near the border in northeastern Mexico.

"Matamoros is widely controlled by a single cartel, the Gulf cartel, which brings down the violence, but at the same time they hold a sort of monopoly in the city," Raúl García, a former Homeland Security Investigations special agent in Matamoros, told Insider.

Cartel control, US restrictions on legal immigration, and the militarized response to insecurity promoted by the US and Mexican governments have left those migrants to suffer, often in silence.

"We don't want the attention. That's why we don't even go to the police. All we want is to wait in line to do things right and be safe in the US, away from the gangs in our country and away from what is happening here," Dominic said.