David is among the estimated 42,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned to Mexico in recent months under President Trump’s new asylum policies. The Trump administration calls the policy “Migrant Protection Protocols,” but far from offering protection, the policy has led to a brutal wave of kidnappings in some of Mexico’s most dangerous border cities.

They didn't even last the night. Hours later and just three miles away, cartel members surrounded David and a dozen other migrants at a bus station. They were forced into trucks and abducted.

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — David wept as U.S. immigration agents marched him and his child across the bridge into Mexico. “They say here in this country, where we are, they kidnap a lot of people," he said.

“[The U.S. agents] told us they were going to bring us to a shelter,” David told VICE News, a few hours before he and his child were kidnapped. “They lied.” VICE News has changed names and withheld certain details of David’s story to protect the identity of him and his family.

VICE News spoke with multiple asylum-seekers who have been kidnapped or narrowly escaped being kidnapped upon being returned to Mexico. All of them said they suspected Mexican immigration officials were working in coordination with the cartels. Often, they were grabbed at the bus station or along the three-mile stretch from the Mexican immigration office to their shelter. The stretch between the border and the shelters may be a few miles, but it is among the most dangerous part of a migrant’s journey.

Powerful criminal organizations have seized on Trump’s changes, targeting asylum-seekers with family in the U.S. by holding them hostage until their relatives come up with thousands of dollars to pay for their release.

“They are sending them to a place that is too dangerous,” Laura, David’s sister, told VICE News. “Why are they doing this? Why, if Mexico is a place that is so dangerous?”

Clothes and shoes are set out to dry inside a phone booth at a migrant shelter in in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Sergio Flores/Vice News

Those who took the government’s offer did so with the understanding that they would never make it back to their court hearing in the U.S., which had been scheduled for three or four months down the road.

Instead, once across the border, Mexican immigration officials gave David and the other 120 migrants sent back that day two options: The government would provide them a bus ride for free to Tapachula, a city 30 hours away, on the border with Guatemala, or they could go it alone in Nuevo Laredo.

But after Laura sent the money, the man stopped picking up. At 8 p.m. that night, Laura received a call from a different number. “A man got on the line and said my brother had been turned over to him.”

The man who lent David his phone spoke with Laura, also identifying himself to her as an immigration agent. He told her he would help David and instructed her to send the money directly to his account. David didn’t have a Mexican ID or passport to receive a wire transfer on his own, but the man assured them their money was in safe hands.

At the Mexican immigration offices, David was frazzled and desperate to reach Laura, who lives in the U.S., and was prepared to wire him money so he could get a bus ticket to a safer city nearby. He borrowed the cellphone of a man he said identified himself as an immigration agent and wore the agency’s typical white-shirt uniform. Outside the office, men in a white four-door truck kept an eye on who came and left the building’s parking lot.

“Why are they doing this? Why, if Mexico is a place that is so dangerous?”

Nuevo Laredo is one of the most dangerous cities in one of the most dangerous regions of Mexico. It’s marked not only by the near-constant crime that fuels the city but also by the impunity with which criminals here operate. The corruption and crime is so prevalent that local news barely covered the recent kidnapping in broad daylight of a minister who ran a shelter for migrants, deeming it too dangerous to report on.

Those who stayed did so at their own risk.

A group of migrants cross back into Mexico after being sent back under the Migrant Protection Protocols. Sergio Flores/VICE News

He said when he and another dozen or so asylum seekers who had been returned that day to Mexico arrived at the bus station in Nuevo Laredo, a group of 20 men were already waiting for them. Immediately, the men forced David, his child, and the other migrants into trucks, as an immigration official looked their way but did nothing.

“The people in migration turned us over to the cartels,” he said. “They know what they are doing. They don’t care if you’re killed or not.”

Mexico’s Institute of Migration, which is in charge of carrying out Mexico’s immigration policies, said it is “committed to combating any behavior that violates the rights and integrity of migrants,” and that it has not received any recent complaints regarding Mexican immigration officials turning migrants over to cartels or turning a blind eye to their kidnapping.

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard downplayed the issue on Thursday, saying he didn’t see the kidnapping of migrants “as a massive phenomenon.” But minutes later, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the government was attentive to the issue. “The more migrants that arrive at the [border], the more criminal groups there are, and the higher the risks.” Ebrard’s office later contacted VICE News to say it was looking into the problem.