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Jorge Dominguez was a U.S. citizen kidnapped in Mexico by the military. Did the U.S. government do anything to find him?

By J. Weston Pippen
Politico
, December 18, 2020

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico—The day they kidnapped Jorge Antonio Dominguez, he had spent the afternoon laying tile at the house on Belisario Dominguez Street. It was 9 p.m. on April 4, 2018, when his father, Daniel Hernandez, arrived for the final inspection. As Hernandez paced the floor of the peach-colored stucco home, pointing to flaws in his son’s work, he realized he’d forgotten to take his diabetes pill. So with the plumbing still a wreck, 18-year-old Jorge and another worker left in the family’s silver Dodge Caravan. It should have been only a short drive to the nearest convenience store for water.

The home on Belisario Dominguez Street was a new beginning for Jorge’s family. After raising five children in Texas, Daniel Hernandez and his wife, Maria Elena Dominguez, had moved across the border to Nuevo Laredo and emptied their savings into flipping houses. It was a decision made in part because of President Donald Trump. Hernandez had a green card and owned a small used-car lot in Fort Worth. But Dominguez had lived in the U.S. illegally since she was six. Two months into Trump’s term, fearing deportation, Dominguez decided it was time to move back to Mexico and get her papers in order. “I wanted to fix them the right way,” she said. Her youngest child, tall and slender Jorge, with the hopeful wisps of a teenager’s first mustache, left high school in Texas to follow his mother. He figured he could visit his older brothers and sisters whenever he wanted; like them, Jorge was a U.S. citizen. “He was our baby,” Dominguez said. “He was a momma’s boy.”

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Photo: María Elena Domínguez in front of the United States Consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Credit: Politico.