On August 3, Aarón Méndez, the director of a migrant shelter in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, was kidnapped by members of organized crime while defending asylum-seekers at his refuge, according to numerous media accounts and two sources familiar with the situation. Criminals arrived at the shelter to kidnap some Cuban migrants and demand ransom from their families; Méndez was taken after refusing to hand the Cubans over, according to one of Méndez’s colleagues at the shelter, as reported by the Spanish wire service Agencia EFE.
Calls to Méndez’ shelter were not answered over the weekend, but a source familiar with the situation—who did not wish to be named out of fear of retaliation—told the Observer that the shelter has not been contacted with any information about Méndez. “There’s a lot of uncertainty; it’s been a week and no one knows anything,” the source said. EFE reported the same.
Five days before the reported kidnapping, the Observer interviewed Méndez as part of a story about the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), the Trump administration policy under which nearly 30,000 asylum seekers have been returned to Mexico to await court dates months in the future. The policy expanded to Nuevo Laredo last month. In Nuevo Laredo and towns all along the border, asylum seekers were already being forced to wait months in order to apply for asylum properly at the bridges, thanks to a separate policy known as “metering.” The Observer could not immediately confirm whether the Cubans Méndez was protecting at his shelter were waiting under metering, had been returned under MPP, or something else. Méndez told the Observer on July 29 that the shelters in Nuevo Laredo were generally not taking migrants under MPP due to capacity issues.
