Undocumented Immigrants And The Brutal World Of America’s Kidnapping Capital

Editor’s Note: The Phoenix News Times and Village Voice Media is telling the stories of Hispanics among us and the different struggles they face. This excerpt is part of an in-depth investigation of undocumented immigrants and the underground world of kidnappings in Phoenix.

Maria was drifting off to sleep on the bedroom floor. She could hear women getting raped in the next room. Only she didn’t hear screams – she heard the laughter of male guards.

The women had been drugged by their rapists, who had done the same to Maria as soon as she walked into the house. They forced her to swallow a red liquid and handed her some chalky, white pills. She drank the liquid and tucked the pills on the side of her mouth, but they were slowly dissolving.

The drugs were beginning to deaden her senses.

Maria had arrived at the modest three-bedroom house in west Phoenix several days earlier in the back of a white van. She was one of about a dozen other immigrants who had hired coyotes to smuggle them into the United States in May. They each paid the human smugglers about $1,800 to guide them safely through the treacherous Arizona desert.

Their guides betrayed them. They delivered them to other coyotes, who were more vicious than their counterparts. The kidnappers demanded another $1,700 apiece for Maria and the 12 others, including two young boys, they were holding.

The armed captors had tried to lock up Maria in the same room with the other women. She was gripped by fear as she watched one of the guards stripping off the women’s clothes.

Read the full Phoenix News Times article here.