Five fantastic stories from this week

ReadThisThing is a daily newsletter featuring one fantastic story each day. Here are the stories we sent out this week:

“The mother told police that the kidnappers had starved and abused her. “They caused so much pain for my daughter that she does not live a normal life,” she wrote to the judge”

“America’s migrant-extortion market remains in the shadows of our fierce immigration debate. One reason is that the crime targets those who are least likely to report it. Another is that the victims of ransom kidnappings are sometimes twice disappeared: after being rescued from the stash houses where they are kept, they are often detained long enough to testify against their captors and then are swiftly deported.”

Where are the Children? By Sarah Stillman, The New Yorker