‘I Will Never Return to Mexico’

Roberto, a San Diego machinist in his mid-30s, used to visit his family across the border in Tijuana every few weeks. But in the summer of 2005, while he was relaxing at a family home there, a group of approximately 20 masked men burst in suddenly. Claiming to be Mexican police, the armed men grabbed Roberto as well as another family member and a close friend. They then blindfolded all three, tied their hands behind their backs, threw them into a car and sped away. The men also took Roberto's new truck, which was parked at the house and may have tipped off the kidnappers that he or his family had enough money to pay their ransom.

Later that day the kidnappers called his oldest daughter to demand payment using a number they had retrieved from Roberto's cell phone. For the following two weeks Roberto, who declined to use his real name because he is still frightened by the ordeal, was hogtied, left on a concrete floor and victimized by "constant" beatings, he says. His captors fed him three tortillas the entire time, and gave him very little water. They separated him from his fellow abductees; he wasn't sure where they were being held. "[The kidnappers] kept telling me they were sharpening their knives and were going to kill me. I didn't know why this was happening to me," Roberto, speaking Spanish through an interpreter, told NEWSWEEK in an exclusive telephone interview. "They broke three of my ribs on the right side and sliced off the tip of my tongue."

Captors let Roberto go after his family paid an undisclosed ransom, says FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth. But Roberto's relative is still missing and presumed dead; his friend, who was also released, remains severely traumatized. Says Roberto, "If I even moved, they'd hit me. I didn't sleep the first week. I constantly thought I was going to die."

Kidnappings of American residents in the Tijuana area south of San Diego have accelerated dramatically since Roberto's 2005 abduction. There were 11 such incidents in 2006 and 26 in 2007. Over the last few months they've spiked to an unprecedented high—and grown ever more violent. Since Thanksgiving at least 18 U.S. residents have been kidnapped and held for ransom in and around Tijuana, according to Keith Slotter, the special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego office. That averages out to about six per month. Late last month Mexican authorities rescued two female real estate agents—one a U.S. resident—who had been kidnapped on Jan. 19 and arrested three kidnappers, according to the FBI. The bureau would not talk specifically about the case or comment on whether the three men were suspects in any of the other abductions.

The kidnappings are just one symptom of a wave of violent crime that has washed over the border region and caused American tourism in Tijuana to drop by more than 50 percent in the last year, according to Jack Doron, president of the Tijuana Merchants Association. Drug gangs have killed more than 50 people in Tijuana already this year, according to the Los Angeles Times, and the city has been the scene of several shootouts and police assassinations in recent months. Two weeks ago residents found six bodies on the streets with signs attached to the corpses that warned against participating in a new Mexican Army program to encourage citizens to inform on drug traffickers. While the FBI's Slotter says the kidnappings and drug violence don't appear to be directly linked, he notes that they are part of the same general trend of growing lawlessness in Baja.

Some of the 18 recent kidnapping victims have been killed, while others have survived but suffered serious injuries, Slotter says. Kidnappers raped some of the female victims. The violence associated with the abductions "goes way beyond anything we've seen, in terms of brutality," he says. "We don't really know why."