NUEVO LAREDO, Tamaulipas — Gunmen from Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel have been kidnapping individuals after they have been deported from Texas by U.S. authorities.

Four Mexican citizens who had just been deported by U.S. authorities from Laredo, Texas, had gone to the bus station in this border city to purchase tickets to their hometowns when a team of Los Zetas cartel gunmen kidnapped them at gunpoint, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office revealed.

The illegal immigrants were held for ransom until state authorities and soldiers with the Mexican army stormed the house where the men had been sequestered. The rescue operation was kicked off after authorities received an anonymous call about victims being held for ransom at a house in the Los Garza neighborhood in this city. During the rescue operation, authorities arrested one gunman who was in charge of guarding the men–he has been identified as Juan Carlos (LNU) who is also believed to be the man who had been making the ransom demands.

Nuevo Laredo has long been a region controlled by the Cartel Del Noreste (CDN) faction of the Los Zetas. The criminal organization has been in charge of all the drug smuggling, human trafficking, kidnappings, extortions, and contract killings in the region. As Breitbart Texas has been reporting for more than a year, rival factions of the Los Zetas known as Grupo Bravo and Vieja Escuela Z have been making a power play against the CDN. The fight for control has led to almost daily violence throughout the border states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “M.A. Navarro” from Ciudad Victoria and “J.A. Espinoza” from Matamoros, Tamaulipas.