FBI: Kidnappings spike in Texas-Mexico border town
TX State Wire
CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Published: April 29, 2010
McALLEN, Texas (AP) – Kidnappings in this Texas border community nearly quadrupled last fiscal year compared to 2008, and most were connected to the drug trade, the local FBI chief told state lawmakers Thursday.
Forty-two people were kidnapped in the McAllen area between October 2008 and September 2009, compared with just 11 the year before. Sixteen are still missing, and many kidnappings likely went unreported, said John Johnson, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in McAllen.
“Fiscal ’09 was off the charts,” Johnson said during a legislative hearing aimed at evaluating Texas’ border security.
Lawmakers, meeting just seven miles from Mexico in McAllen, wanted to gather information about how state funding was – or wasn’t – working to help keep the border safe.
Nearly nine hours of testimony and debate failed to yield consensus on what constitutes spillover drug-trafficking violence along the Texas-Mexico border, but law enforcement agencies agreed on one thing: They need more resources.
Murders and kidnappings linked to the drug trade have been reported in several border communities in Texas, while some agencies have been stretched by routine drug smuggling, local and state law enforcement told lawmakers.
Although experts said it was difficult to asses how much violence in Texas is linked to crimes in Mexico, Johnson said drug trafficking was clearly connected to the spike in local kidnappings.
Many are never reported, he said. And even in the known cases, the FBI has been able to collect DNA samples from relatives of barely half of the victims.
“Some of these victims, no one is lining up to or knocking on the door to find them,” he said.
Investigators haven’t been able to pinpoint what caused the jump, but Johnson said such crimes tend to be cyclical.
Johnson’s testimony was a jarring conclusion to the hearing of two Texas House committees charged with examining the state’s border security efforts.
The lawmakers took testimony from a long list of scheduled speakers. Small town police chiefs said drug-related crimes stretched their resources, while federal law enforcement agencies said they wanted to continue to improve cooperation with state and local agencies.
But perhaps the most surprising testimony came from Patricia Martinez, a drug counselor from nearby Pharr who said her 20-year-old son and his father were kidnapped in May 2009 while having dinner at a restaurant in Reynosa, Mexico.
She hasn’t heard from either her son or her ex-husband since. Both are U.S. citizens, and her son – whom she said was an excellent student with no ties to drugs – lived with her in Pharr.
Martinez said she reported the crime to the U.S. consulate, her local police department, the FBI and the Reynosa mayor, but to no avail.
She said the crimes often go unreported because victims’ families fear that kidnappers will kill their victims if they are reported to authorities.
Friends told her not to go public, but after waiting nearly a year with no word, “really I am going crazy, I think I wait enough,” she tearfully said.
Steve McCraw, executive director of the Department of Public Safety, said he did not have numbers that showed a definitive spike in kidnappings or extortion along the border. He also did not have statistics to distinguish between innocent victims and those with ties to drug trafficking.
“Mexican cartel-related activity impacts every region in Texas,” McCraw said.
Rep. Veronica Gonzales, chairwoman of the House Committee on Border & Intergovernmental Affairs, said it was sometime difficult to asses whether violence in Texas was linked to crimes in Mexico.
“Not a day goes by that we don’t hear spillover or crossover and now we hear bleed-over,” Gonzales said. “It’s hard to know for sure what is true, what is hype.”
What He/ She Said