Authorities in Texas have advised American citizens to not travel to Mexico during spring break for security reasons.
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steven McCraw in a statement on Friday urged residents to avoid spring break travel to Mexico, warning that drug cartel violence and other crime pose a significant safety threat, according to NPR.org.
“We have a duty to inform the public about safety, travel risks, and threats,” McCraw said. “Based on the volatile nature of cartel activity and the violence we are seeing there; we are urging individuals to avoid travel to Mexico at this time.”
The warning comes after four Americans were kidnapped shortly after crossing the border into Matamoros last week. Their vehicle came under fire shortly after crossing into the country on Friday. Two of them were murdered by cartel members and two were released unharmed.
One of the cartel groups in Matamoros apologized for the killings and handed over the men they say are responsible to the police. Tamaulipas, the state where Matamoros is located, is considered one of the most violent places in Mexico.
According to the Mexico Daily Post, a letter left with the cartel gunmen, who had been left on the roadside, accused them of acting “under their own decision-making and lack of discipline” as well as supposedly breaking cartel rules over “protecting the lives of the innocent”.
t was signed by the “Scorpions Group”, a splinter faction of the powerful Gulf Cartel.
In another incident, three American women who went to Mexico to sell clothes at a market have been missing for more than two weeks, reports the BBC.
The increased violence is threatening to sour relations between the two countries. The State Department’s most recent travel advisory, from October 2022, lists Tamaulipas as one of six Mexican states under a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for crime and kidnapping.
In the meantime, more than 500 Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Mexicans remain missing in Mexico, reports the Washington Post.
A Republican senator has urged President Joe Biden’s administration to allow the deployment of US troops over the border to fight the cartels. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called the proposal “arrogant,”
