While it is common for Americans to get entangled in violence in northern Mexico, a shared border nearly 2,000 miles long with large swaths dominated by drug cartels and criminal organizations, it is not very common for U.S. nationals to be kidnapped in Mexico.
What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Two people who said they were relatives of the kidnapped Americans told The Associated Press and CNN that the group was going to Mexico for tummy-tuck surgery for one member of the group.
A video that appears to show the kidnapping and that has circulated widely on social media showed three men dragging people on the ground and then lifting and dropping them in the bed of a white pickup truck. At least one of the men wore an armored vest, and they were dragging the people in clear view of nearby traffic.
The U.S.-Mexico border is one of the busiest in the world, with young Mexicans crossing north to shop or attend private high schools, and American nationals going south to buy cheap medication or undergo medical procedures that are unaffordable at home, from dentist appointments to cosmetic surgery.
While Americans can be victims of the violence that plagues much of the border, it is often because they are at the wrong place at the wrong time, traversing a frontier rife with criminal activity and drug cartels that actively push drugs, migrants and even endangered wildlife into the United States for a profit, sometimes with the help of corrupt Mexican authorities.
But the seemingly targeted nature of the kidnapping last week — with a car ramming into the vehicle the American nationals were traveling in — has led to questions about whether or not the victims were mistaken for someone else.
Cartels often avoid targeting American nationals, fearful of the blowback it will cause by the U.S. law enforcement. The kidnapping Friday has left officials in Washington wondering if the American nationals were unintentionally caught up in criminal violence or purposefully targeted.
Just a few days before the four Americans were kidnapped, an American citizen was killed by the Mexican military in the same state, Tamaulipas, as he was driving back from a nightclub with his friends on Feb. 26.
Elda Cantú contributed reporting.
