United States: Authorities in the US state of Texas have instructed American citizens not travel to Mexico during the spring break holidays for security reasons.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) remarked that drug cartel violence represented a significant threat for anyone crossing into Mexico. The announcement comes after four Americans were kidnapped recently after crossing the border. Two of them were murdered, while two were released unharmed.

In addition, three American women who went to Mexico to sell clothes at a market have been missing for more than two weeks.

“Drug cartel violence and other criminal activity represent a significant safety threat to anyone who crosses into Mexico right now. “Based on the volatile nature of cartel activity and the violence we are seeing there, we are urging individuals to avoid travel to Mexico at this time,” DPS director Mr. Steven McCraw stated.

Four Americans were kidnapped by a drug cartel, and two of them were murdered, when they visited the town of Matamoros, Mexico, earlier March 2022.

The cartel responsible has since apologised for the incident and handed over its own gunmen to the police.

A letter left with the cartel gunmen, who had been left on the roadside, accused them of acting “under their own decision-making and lack of discipline” as well as supposedly breaking cartel rules over “protecting the lives of the innocent”. The letter was signed by the “Scorpions Group”, a splinter faction of the powerful Gulf Cartel. The incident threatens to sour relations between the two countries.

Recently, a Republican senator has urged President Mr. Joe Biden’s administration to allow the deployment of US troops over the border to fight the cartels.

Mexican President Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador called the proposals “arrogant.”

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