Mexico City, Jul 24, 2011 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Federal Police officers rescued 12 migrants who were kidnapped two months ago in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the Public Safety Secretariat said.
The migrants - eight Central Americans, three Brazilians and an Iranian - were found at a safe house in Reynosa, a city across the border from McAllen, Texas, the secretariat said.
The two women and 10 men were taken to the house from Chiapas, a state on the border with Guatemala.
Four of the migrants are from Honduras, three from El Salvador and one from Nicaragua, the secretariat said.
The migrants told police that the kidnappers "beat them severely," the secretariat said.
Gunmen working for the Los Zetas drug cartel massacred 72 migrants, the majority of them Central Americans, at a ranch in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, last August.
Nearly 200 bodies were found earlier this year in clandestine graves in Tamaulipas.
A total of 47 clandestine graves containing 193 bodies were found in April and May.
The mass graves were found following reports that gunmen had forced men off buses headed for Reynosa between March 19 and March 31.
The bus passengers were grabbed in a bid to "identify possible members" of the Gulf cartel, which has been battling Los Zetas for control of smuggling routes into the United States, some of the suspects arrested in connection with the killings told investigators.
The discovery of the mass graves rocked Mexico, where more than 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006.
Thousands of migrants, both Mexicans and foreigners, try to enter the United States each year via land routes from Mexico.
The trek is a dangerous one, with criminals and corrupt Mexican officials preying on the migrants.
An estimated 300,000 Central Americans and 400,000 Mexicans undertake the dangerours journey across Mexico each year on their way to the United States.
Central American migrants follow a long route that takes them into Chiapas state, which is on the border with Guatemala, walking part of the way or riding aboard freight trains, buses and cargo trucks.
The flow of migrants has increased markedly in the northern and northeastern parts of Mexico since U.S. officials increased security along the border in the northwestern part of the country.
The National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, Mexico's equivalent of an ombudsman's office, recently identified 71 cities in 16 of the country's 32 states that are considered dangerous for Mexican and foreign migrants headed to the United States.
"Kidnappings, abuse, extortion, robberies and sexual attacks on migrants have been documented" in the 71 cities, the CNDH said in a statement.
About 20,000 Central Americans were kidnapped by organized crime groups, which extorted money from them or forced them to join their gangs, the CNDH said in a report released last year