NEW YORK: Marlon Márquez, a Honduran who lives in Miami, appears to be a typical undocumented immigrant from Central America.
But he is far from that. He crossed the border near McAllen, Texas, as a hostage of people who claimed to belong to the powerful Mexican criminal gang Los Zetas who, then turned him over to an allied group on the US side.
These gang members then kept Marquez hostage until local police and federal agents rescued him and other Central American captives during a raid in 2008 in San Marcos, Texas.
While the raid has been publicized before, Márquez’s account provides possible evidence of the presence of Los Zetas inside the United States and of a possible link to migrant smugglers on the American side of the border.
Marquez said two armed men who said they belonged to Los Zetas escorted him and about 30 other migrants into the United States and then delivered them to captors in San Marcos, a city between San Antonio and Austin more than 200 miles from the border.
Marquez recounted his extraordinary journey during a recent interview in Little Havana where he now lives.
Federal officials involved in the San Marcos investigation said they could not find any evidence of Zeta connection, but did not rule it out.
“Special agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) identified no Zeta cartel affiliation with any of the individuals identified during the 2008 San Marcos, Texas, HIS human smuggling investigation and the resulting prosecution,” according to a statement from Deputy Special Agent in Charge Aristides Jiménez of the HIS San Antonio office. “Although HSI found no connection to the Zeta cartel during its investigation, that possibility cannot be totally discounted.”
Marquez traveled to the United States for the first time as an undocumented immigrant in 2004 to join his family in Miami. Marquez returned to Honduras four years later because he couldn’t find a job.
But the situation was no better in Honduras and, after only three months in his hometown of San Pedro Sula, Marquez decided to return to Miami by making another illegal trip across the Mexican border.
