(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) LaTavia Washington McGeee and Eric Williams, the two American citizens who survived a violent kidnapping by a Mexican drug cartel, took to CNN to detail the harrowing hell they experienced at the hands of Mexican nationals a month after the broad-daylight assault.
“You’re a woman in custody with cartel gunmen. Were they threatening to you in violence, in sexual violence?” CNN host Anderson Cooper asked McGee about the ordeal she experienced. “Yeah, they said all this stuff—all did,” McGee told Cooper.
“They try and make us have sex with each other, but we told them we’re brothers and sisters and that she was pregnant,” Williams added. “Wait a minute, they tried to make you have sex with each other?” a stunned Cooper asked, to which visibly shaken McGee and Williams answered affirmatively.
“They was like, ‘what are y’all?’ We said, ‘brothers and sisters,’ and they was like, ‘have sex with each other.’ We were like, ‘no, these are my brothers. I’m pregnant,” McGee answered.
The victims’ statements come months after CNN attempted to downplay the dangers of the Biden administration’s open border policies. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale criticized Republicans for claiming the southern border was open and not safe. In a similar fashion, CNN slammed the U.S. Supreme Court for extending Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allowed the swift deportation of undocumented immigrants on public health grounds, the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters reported on December 2022.
McGee, alongside Williams, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, were in Mexico to undergo a tummy tuck plastic surgery, a trip many U.S. citizens do because of lower costs. Woodard and Brown did not survive the savage ordeal after being shot shortly after the four drove past the Mexican border.
The Mexican kidnappers, which were part of the Gulf Cartel, held guns to the heads of the American citizens and forced them not to look up, Williams said. “They were putting the guns to our head, telling us to not look up, things like that.”
“That’s where Shaeed said, ‘I love y’all, and I’m gone.’ And he died right there,” a tearful Williams said. “He said he loved us and he was gone. It was the last thing he did.”
Recalling how Brown died, McGee said she was telling him sorry for asking him to accompany her for the plastic surgery.
“He was fighting for his life and they didn’t do nothing,” she said. “I talked to him the whole time […] I just told him sorry because I asked him to come with me.”
The Gulf Cartel issued an apology letter and handed over five of its members to Mexican authorities, claiming the perpetrators plotted the kidnapping without prior authorization from the carcel. The Mexican cartel holds geographic control of the northern part of Mexico of Matamoros, the same city where the four U.S. citizens were held hostage and subsequently kidnapped.
21 Attorney Generals asked the Biden administration to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Similarly, Senators Rick Scott, R-Flo., and Roger Marshall reintroduced on March 8 the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act, a bill that would provide federal law enforcement agents with additional authority to fight back against the violent drug cartels in the U.S. by officially designating them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
It is unknown whether President Biden would sign this GOP-led bill.
