EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Police in Chihuahua, Mexico, say they have freed 1,245 migrants from criminal gangs in the past seven months.

The kidnapping, extortion and violence inflicted on the foreign nationals who come to the border looking for a way into the United States is rising even though overall migrant traffic has dropped dramatically in recent months, a law enforcement official says.

“We have diminished migration flows in terms of caravans and people arriving on trains. But I must point out we are seeing more people who are being kidnapped and extorted,” Chihuahua State Public Safety Director Gilberto Loya said.

Abducted migrants typically are kept captive in overcrowded stash houses, mostly in Juarez just south of the border from El Paso, Texas. They are rarely fed or even given water, Mexican officials said.

Police find out about the stash houses through calls made to 911 by horrified neighbors who hear screams or see large groups of huddled people through windows. Sometimes the tips come from U.S. officials contacted stateside by the victims’ relatives. Occasionally, police just come across groups of individuals with signs of violence walking about aimlessly.

Such was the case last week on the highway from Chihuahua City to Juarez. State police officers found 10 Sudanese and Moroccan nationals released from an unknown location after their relatives paid a ransom.

“Last week we had two important rescues. One of 10 people from Sudan and Morocco,” Loya said. “And last week we had the rescue of five people, three men and a woman from Guatemala and Nicaragua. They were malnourished, dehydrated.

“What they wanted was to get to the United States. Unfortunately, they are falling prey to and abused by criminal gangs.”

American migrant support nonprofits warned last spring that violence against asylum-seekers was on the rise due to immigration crackdowns in Mexico and on the U.S. Southwest border.

In a July report called Pain as a Strategy, the Hope Border Institute outlined how actions taken by federal authorities in Mexico, Texas state authorities at the Rio Grande levee and the Biden administration’s June 4 temporary closing of the border to asylum-seekers without an appointment at a port of entry are putting migrants in harm’s way.

The institute’s research showed how three transnational criminal organizations in Juarez – La Linea, the Sinaloa cartel and the up-and-coming La Empresa group – control the Mexican side of the border.

“Once they arrive in Juarez, cartels routinely kidnap migrants and stow them in stash houses, where they take away all their belongings including cell phones,” according to Pain as a Strategy. “Having kidnapped migrants, cartel elements will proceed to contact family members to demand ransom (up to $20,000 according to survivors’ testimonies), frequently after a week of having the person kidnapped so that families are more anxious and prone to pay.”

Jesus de la Torre, assistant director for global migration for the Hope Border Institute, said it is imperative for the U.S. and Mexican government to change their migration policies to keep vulnerable people safe while they are searching for a better life.

“The best antidote to reduce crimes against people on the move and deaths is to provide safe migration pathways and place humanitarian values at the core of our migration policies,” De la Torre told Border Report in an email on Tuesday. “The U.S. and Mexican governments must stop repressing people on the move and, instead, allow them to exercise their right to seek asylum in a fair and humane way.”