Ransom Frees Lawmaker's Kin in Mexico

[douglas9]

Source: New York Times

A Mexican citizen who is a distant relative of a prominent congressman from Texas was kidnapped last week in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and then released within three days after the victim’s immediate family paid ransom of $32,000.

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, helped the Mexican authorities pursue the case, and an internal ICE memorandum, much of it confirmed in interviews with American officials, says the congressman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, facilitated the release.

That has led families of other victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez, a forbidding city with warring drug cartels and rampant murder rates, to say that Mr. Reyes, whose district is directly across the border, has not been nearly so responsive to their requests for help.

But Mr. Reyes, a sixth-term Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee, issued a statement through a spokesman on Friday denying that his office had given the matter any special treatment and saying he had never even met the woman who was kidnapped.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/us/28kidnap.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=americas&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1214659458-ED07hbLMbHwCO7yh/igWKA