Back on August 13, police in the Mexican city of Chihuahua revealed they had rescued 1,245 migrants from criminal gangs over the past seven months. Back then, the city's law enforcement official said that kidnappings and violence targeting foreign nationals who attempt to cross the border into the United States was on the rise, forcing abducted migrants to be held in cramped stash houses for ransom.
But besides kidnappings, cartels and other players at the border are responsible for a different crime that's also on the rise: extortion.
A new study published in Injury Epidemiology reveals that Latino immigrants traveling to the United States are extorted $804 in average before reaching the border, costs that have to be added to the large sums often required for smugglers or coyotes to guide them into the country.
"Because the migration journey to the U.S. requires resources (e.g. savings to pay formal and informal migration means), Latinx migrants are especially vulnerable to extortion, theft, human trafficking, and other crimes en route," researchers explained. "Additionally, law enforcement and criminal actors may assume that migrants are vulnerable targets because they are unlikely to report these crimes given varying documentation statuses."
Participants were asked who the perpetrators were, where the incidents occurred, and the amount of money taken. The study found that that the most common perpetrators were police officers (80.6%) and immigration officials (37.3%), followed by drug traffickers or gangs (25.4%) and the military (20.9%). As for places where extortion happened the most, Mexico tops the list (77.6% of respondents saying they were victims of extortion there), followed by Guatemala (67.2%), Colombia (22.4%) and Nicaragua (20.9%).
Other insights from the study were that adults traveling with children were more likely to be extorted and pregnant participants were less likely. The financial burden of extortion, along with the associated trauma, contribute to higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among those who were extorted compared to those who were not.
Laura Vargas, author of the study, explained the importance of studying such matters to Medical Xpress:
"It's important to shed light on it and understand it from their lived experience. And even though we have a small sample here, a vast majority of respondents experienced extortion; ultimately, we clinicians need to think very actively about how to engage with new immigrant populations through the lens of traumatization that may differ from what we observe here in the U.S., aiming to care for the various health effects that stem from PTSD and allow newly arrived immigrants a chance at a dignified life."
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