Deportee Kidnap Victim Freed: Talks of Beating and Starvation

 Posted By DD for Borderland Beat from Cleveland.com

US / Mexico Border between Laredo,Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas

Thanks to Tu Fren for the Heads Up and Link
By: Michael Sangiacomo, The Plain Dealer
Additional reporting by: Alfredo Corchado, The Dallas Morning News

Extra Material from News5Cleveland

Aug 2, 2017

PAINESVILLE, Ohio -- The Painesville man who was kidnapped Tuesday night by a Mexican crime cartel after being deported to a dangerous city in Mexico, was released Sunday night after enduring five days of beatings and starvation. Francisco Narciso was released after his girlfriend in Painesville wired two payments of nearly $4,000.

Francisco Narciso said he was accosted by two men with guns Tuesday night shortly after he was taken to Nuevo Laredo by ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

"He had just bought a bus ticket to another city when he was approached by two men with guns," said his girlfriend who is the mother of his two children but does not want to be identified. She talked with him by phone Sunday and he told her about his ordeal. "They went to either side of him, put the guns to his side and ordered him to get into a truck," she said.

Nuevo Laredo One of Mexico's Most Dangerous Cities
US State Dept Has Issued Travel Warnings

He told her he was taken to a building in the city of Neuvo Laredo, in the state of Tamaulipas, described by the U.S. State Department as one of the most dangerous states in Mexico. It is town were crime cartels rule and law enforcement is "limited to non-existent," according to the state department.
ICE is being criticized for deporting people and depositing them in Neuvo Laredo, where crime is rampant and deportees are favorite targets. ICE has not responded to numerous requests for answers about why Laredo is used as a deportation point.

Narciso told his girlfriend he was locked in a room with many other hostages, including another deportee from Painesville. He said the number of people, including children, kept changing as victims were taken away and more were added

Another Day in Nuevo Laredo
ICE Often Deposits Deportees at Night  

"They beat him the whole time and starved him," said his girlfriend through a translator. "He is still suffering from head and neck injuries (suffered in June when his car was hit in the rear by another car in Mentor) so he is in a great deal of pain. They kept saying they would kill him."

An undercover investigator said the scenario is common.

"These homes, holding cells really, are far too common in border communities, especially along the Texas-Tamaulipas border because the criminal groups essentially run the area," said the investigator who declined to be identified. "These houses serve two purposes. You have rooms for migrants held for ransom and other rooms, or houses for migrants smuggled north."

Narciso's girlfriend said she was first contacted late Tuesday night.

"Around 11 o'clock my phone rang and it was a man I did not know," she said. "He said someone wanted to talk to me and turned the phone over (to Narciso). He said he had been kidnapped and the men wanted $3,000 wired to them or they would kill him."

She said the kidnapper got back on the phone and said he wanted the money immediately or he "do what we always do, kill him and dump his body." She begged for more time, said she did not have that kind of money. He said he would call back in the morning.

The woman spent the night asking friends and acquaintances for money.

"The next morning (Wednesday) they called and said if I did not send them the MoneyGram I would never see him again," she said. "I went and sent the money, $3,000, and waited. They called again and I said I sent the money. I asked when and where he would be released so I could arrange to have someone meet him. They just laughed."

The ordeal was not over. They told her they wanted more money, another $800. She is not sure when it happened, she said she lost track of the days. She scraped the money together and sent it to the kidnappers by MoneyGram. But then the kidnappers wanted even more.

"They called and said they wanted another $200 before they would let him go," she said. "I tried to send it, but it would not go through because I had reached the limit of how much I could send to one person. I told them that when they called and I was very afraid about what would happen."

The answer was silence all weekend. She said there were no calls and she feared for Narciso's safety.

Then, at 11 p.m. Sunday, the phone rang. It was Narciso.

David DeJesus Casillas, Husband of Beatriz Morelos Casillas,
who is Being Deported to Nuevo Laredo from Painesville, Ohio
The Morelos Casillas Family has Four Children

"He was crying and was very frightened, I still don't know exactly how they set him free," she said. "He said he was released with another hostage. He said they were treated like animals and the men kept threatening to kill him. They beat him over and over, which worried me because of his other injuries. They did not feed him."

Narciso took the bus ticket that he bought just before he was kidnapped and got on a bus toward Mexico City. He is now hiding out in a house of friends. His girlfriend does not want to reveal the relationship of the people giving Narciso aid, or even say what city in the Mexico City area he is in, because both are afraid.

"We keep telling him he needs to go the hospital because the beatings and starvation may have made his head injuries worse, but he is afraid to leave the house," she said. "He is very frightened."

Chardon attorney Elizabeth Ford, who has been working with Narciso's girlfriend since he was arrested by ICE after his car accident for being in the country illegally, said it is unthinkable that ICE keeps deporting people to the dangerous area of Neuvo Laredo and abandoning them.

Beatriz Morelos Casillas and her Family
The Attorney is Lobbying the State Dept to Delay
her Deportation 

Tuesday morning another one of her clients, Beatriz Morelos Casillas, is expected to be deported to the same city where Narciso was kidnapped. She has asked ICE to delay the deportation or at least change the city Casillas will be deported to, but as of this evening they have not responded.

"The government itself says it's dangerous," said Ford in an earlier interview. "And just this week a Painesville man recovering from a severe head injury was kidnapped... Why would our immigration people choose that city to send anyone to, especially a mother of four to?"

Nuevo Laredo is in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas bordering eastern Texas and is described on the U.S. Department of State website as dangerous and a place that should be avoided.

"U.S. citizens should defer all non-essential travel to the state of Tamaulipas due to violent crime including homicide, armed robbery, carjacking, extortion and sexual assault," the travel warning says. "The number of reported kidnappings in Tamaulipas  is among the  highest in  Mexico."

The State Department warned of "Organized criminal groups may target public and private passenger buses traveling through Tamaulipas," the report says. "These groups sometimes take all passengers hostage and demand ransom payments...Nuevo Laredo has experienced numerous gun battles and attacks with explosive devices in the past year.

Deporting Mexicans has been a constant source of tension for mexican officials worried that migrants become magnets for criminal groups who kidnap, extort and too often recruit them for criminal activities.

Young Daughter of Beatriz Morelos Casillas
Protesting the Deportation of her own Mother                       

Deporting Mexicans has been a constant source of tension for Mexican officials worried that migrants become magnets for criminal groups who kidnap, extort and too often recruit them for criminal activities. "We have expressed our concerns to U.S. authorities several times in the past," said one Mexican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 

This is especially a bloody time in Nuevo Laredo in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas where in recent few years the deadly Zetas organization has evolved into the CDN, Cartel del Noroeste, or Northeast Cartel. The CDN controls not just drug routes, but smuggling and "every criminal activity imaginable," said Arturo Fontes, a former veteran FBI agent now working as a private investigator in the border region. He was once stationed in Laredo and threatened by the Zetas.

"It's a common occurrence," he said. "You have vulnerable people who are dropped off at the border, in a city that doesn't belong to them and they have something precious, whether it's a vehicle, jewelry, or relatives in the United States that these criminals can extort."

9 Immigrants Died in the back of an 18 Wheeler Tractor Trailer July 23, 2017
in a Walmart Parking Lot in San Antonio , Texas
Where over 100 Immigrants were to be Delivered 

Fontes added that cartels prey on migrants who go north or are headed south, adding that he suspects CDN was behind the smuggling operation in which scores of migrants were found crammed in a sweltering 18-wheeler in San Antonio last weekend. Ten people died and more than a dozen others were hospitalized with life threatening injuries.

"Migrants are money makers," Fontes said. "They're vulnerable. They're easy prey."

Protester at HOLA's Deportation Policy Protest
after the Deportation of Beatriz Morelos Casillas
Painesville , Ohio the same town Francisco Narciso was Deported from

One in four people living in Painesville is of Hispanic descent. Recent high profile deportations have many undocumented immigrants there living in fear, but they aren’t the only ones. After the deportation of Beatriz Morelos on Monday, not only are undocumented immigrants fearful of living in Painesville, but U.S. citizens are too.

“I call it a nightmare because you don’t know what’s going on in your life,” said Oscar Ornelas, a Painesville resident and employee of St. Mary’s Catholic Church. “People, going out to work, not knowing if they will be coming back,” said Ana Padilla, a Mexican Immigrant who has lived in Painesville for 23 years.

Ornelas and Padilla are both of Mexican descent and both U.S. citizens. Both, though, are living in constant fear. “Two landscapers were just asked randomly and it was not a traffic stop or anything, they   ( ICE agents ) were just asking for documents,” said Padilla.

ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids, Ornelas and Padilla say, are a common occurrence in Painesville where the population is a quarter Hispanic. 80 percent of those Hispanics hail

from Mexico.

“Everybody has the name Mexicans. Doesn’t matter if they’re Puerto Ricans, South Americans or Caribbean and that’s very sad because that makes us feel like the worst country of the world,” said Oscar Ornelas. 

HOLA organized protest against ICE Deportation Policies

Since the beginning of 2017, HOLA – Hispanics of Lake and Ashtabula County – estimates there have been hundreds of undocumented immigrants deported from Northeast Ohio.

When asked what it’s like living here, Padilla said, “If you’d asked me this six months ago, I would say, an amazing place to live, an amazing place to raise a family, now I cannot say the same.”

According to the U.S. Immigration Courts website, so far this year, nearly 2,000 people have been deported from Ohio. You can view that website here.

                                 
                                       HOLA holds a rally protesting deportations
                                          Hispanics of Lake and Ashtabula County

Several hundred people turned out for a rally in downtown Painesville protesting the deportation of Beatriz Morelos Casillas. The Painesville woman was arrested on a traffic stop last weekend. The mother of four is expected to be deported next week. July 27, 2017 (Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer)

David DeJesus Casillas is introduced with his children at a rally protesting the deportation of his wife. Beatriz Morelos Casillas was arrested on a traffic stop last weekend. July 27, 2017 (Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer)