Thirty-one “foreigners” were kidnapped Saturday in northern Mexico as they were traveling by bus to a city that borders the US, a spokesman for state security authorities said yesterday.

The driver reported that he was “intercepted by five vehicles” and that “31 of the 36 passengers” had been kidnapped, Tamaulipas state Security Ministry spokesman Jorge Cuejar told the Milenio group television network.

The kidnapped “are foreigners”, while the other five passengers are Mexican, he clarified.

The bus had departed from Monterrey, an industrial city in northern Mexico, and had a final destination in Matamoros, a border city through which many migrants try to cross to Brownsville (Texas).

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said yesterday during his usual morning press conference that the authorities have been investigating since Saturday.

Between October 2022 and September 2023, there were a record 2.4 million apprehensions of immigrants arriving by land in the US, according to US Border Patrol (CBP).

The US-Mexico border is now “the world’s most dangerous land migration route,” with 686 dead or missing, according to an International Organization for Migration (IOM) report released in September.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Mexico during Christmas week for talks with President Lopez Obrador on the immigration issue. The Mexican president spoke after the meeting of “important agreements” at the bilateral level, without giving further details.