Mexican police were searching Tuesday for 27 farm workers who were kidnapped in northwestern Mexico by dozens of heavily armed men wearing military-style uniforms, the Associated Press reported. The men were reportedly kidnapped before dawn on Monday and Sinoloa state Attorney General Alfredo Higuera said they may have been taken by a drug gang hoping to press them into work growing marijuana. The owner of the vegetable camp has family ties to Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a suspected leader of the Juarez drug cartel, according to a statement from the office of joint police and military operations in Culiacan, Sinoloa. Also Tuesday, 21 police were arrested in the northern border city of Tijuana on suspicion of working with criminal gangs, said Rommel Moreno, attorney general of Baja California state, where Tijuana is located. Two of the officers were state police and the rest came from municipal ranks, Moreno said. Moreno declined to release further details of the case to avoid compromising the investigation. On Tuesday, the body of a 28-year-old man was dumped in an empty lot in the beach resort of Rosarito, outside Tijuana. The victim was still carrying a loaded gun.
