Kiran Nazish

Special for USA TODAY

TEQUISQUIAPAN, Mexico — Hernandez Martinez came to Mexico to escape a brutal drug cartel in Honduras, but his treatment in Mexico isn't much better. On May 30, local police robbed him and then threw him and five other migrants from Central America off of a moving train in this town about 100 miles northeast of Mexico City.

"The police took all the money I was carrying," the 41-year-old woodcutter said of the $120 he had borrowed from several relatives to make the journey. "Now I don’t have a penny. There is nothing to go back to." Martinez said four other Hondurans he was traveling with had been taken away earlier in Oaxaca, south of here, by local gang members "in front of (Mexican) authorities."

While Mexican politicians complain about the mistreatment of Mexican immigrants fleeing to the United States, Mexico is far more abusive toward Central and South American migrants like Martinez who seek asylum or want to pass through to the U.S., human rights groups allege.

Many of the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing violence in their home countries, "are routinely preyed upon by both criminal organizations and corrupt government officials in Mexico," the Washington Office on Latin America, a non-profit rights group, said in a report issued in May.

Martinez said he fled Honduras after a notorious local cartel, the Cachiros, killed his three younger brothers when they refused to work for them. He said his starving family was counting on him to send money once he got to the U.S. and found work.

"My family has not eaten a cooked meal in months because there is no job except working for the cartel," he said. "There is no wood to cut. There are no farms left to work in because of the droughts. There is no water in the homes."

Now his biggest fear is that he'll be kidnapped by a Mexican cartel that will exchange him for another captive held by the Honduras cartel.

Martin Rios, who runs a kitchen to feed migrants in Tequisquiapan, confirmed the deal between drug cartels. “Many immigrants who take the train are kidnapped by the cartels here and exchanged with other cartels,” he said. “They are often used as slaves, the women are sexually harassed and often used in the human trafficking business.”

Vicki Fox, who has done research on the issue at the University of London, said nine out of 10 Central American migrants in Ixtepec "had been the victim of a serious crime in Southern Mexico, ranging from armed robbery and assault to gang rape and attempted murder."

Fox said some migrants reported extortion by local Mexican authorities, too. "But this is the tip of the iceberg of the abuse, which includes mass-kidnap, rape, disappearance and murder at the hands of organized crime groups such, as the Zetas."

"Those who cannot pay for their release are murdered, and their bodies have been cut into pieces and burnt or dissolved in chemicals and made into fertilizer to spread on fields," Fox added. "All trace of them, of their humanity, disappeared."

Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy, said the plight of Central Americans fleeing violence back home "has revealed a deep vein of hypocrisy among Mexican politicians, who rightfully criticize the U.S. for its treatment of Mexican migrants as criminals and then do the same to migrants in this country."

"Human rights violations, rape, murder and extortion of migrants in Mexico is rampant and authorities turn a blind eye or actively participate in it,” Carlsen said.

The National Institute of Migration, the Mexican agency that deals with Central American migrants, did not respond to requests for comment.

Rios, who runs the food kitchen, said most Central Americans who arrive in Mexico complain about mistreatment by police and state authorities. "There is a sentiment spread against them in this country, that they are a threat to society, that they are thieves," he said. "There is no sympathy for many of them who flee deadly violence amid poverty in their countries.”

Rios said he also has been threatened by authorities for helping the migrants: “They tell me if I don’t stop working, I will be killed.”