Texas authorities are warning Americans, especially those planning spring break trips, to avoid Mexico after the recent uptick in violence that left two dead.
“Drug cartel violence and other criminal activity represent a major safety threat to anyone who crosses into Mexico immediately,” Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in a press release.
Lt. Chris Olivarez of the DPS told Fox Saturday that the department was gearing up for spring breakers who is perhaps looking for to cross the border.
“At once it is simply too dangerous with the rise in violence and kidnappings which can be going down in Mexico,” Olivarez said, adding, “I can’t stress enough to those which can be fascinated about traveling to Mexico, especially for spring breakers … to avoid those areas as much as possible.”
The State Department has also issued a level 4 travel advisory — its most severe — to avoid 4 Mexican states.
In the most recent disturbing incident, two sisters from Texas and a friend who crossed the border into Mexico last month to sell clothes at a flea market haven’t been heard from in about two weeks, authorities said Friday.
The FBI said it was aware sisters Maritza Trinidad Perez Rios, 47, Marina Perez Rios, 48 and their friend, Dora Alicia Cervantes Saenz, 53, have gone missing.
The sisters are from Peñitas, a small border city in Texas near McAllen.
The ladies were said to be traveling in a green mid-Nineties Chevy Silverado to a flea market in the town of Montemorelos, a few three-hour drive from the border.
News of their disappearance got here every week after 4 South Carolina residents were kidnapped in broad daylight in Matamoros on March 3.
They’d traveled to Mexico so one in all them, 35-year-old Latavia “Tay” McGee, could get a tummy tuck.
McGee and Eric James Williams, 38, were found 4 days after they were grabbed off the road, injured but alive in a shack east of Matamoros.
They were taken to a medical center in Brownsville, Texas.
Their two friends, Shaeed Woodard, 33, and Zindell Brown, in his mid-20s, had been shot dead.
A 33-year-old Mexican woman caught within the crossfire through the kidnapping was also killed.
Six people have been arrested in reference to the kidnapping and murders.
The Scorpion group of the region’s Gulf cartel turned over those they felt were responsible together with an apologetic note that said the five accused kidnappers “acted under their very own decision-making and lack of discipline” after they ambushed the victims.
Olivarez said the cartel’s move to present up its own members was simply a solution to divert attention from the organization.
“Normally, when these tragedies happen, nobody’s left alive,” he said.
