Tropical Storm Alberto, the season’s first named storm, has weakened as it moves inland over northeast Mexico — but not before bringing heavy rains to the parched region and leaving at least three dead.

Tropical Storm Alberto is rumbling toward northeast Mexico as the first named storm of the season, carrying heavy rains that left three people dead but also brought hope to a region suffering under a prolonged, severe drought.

When four Americans were kidnapped in the border city of Matamoros, authorities rescued the survivors after three days.

As many as 50 people in Mexico are missing after they set off on simple highway trips between the industrial hub of Monterrey and the border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Fear has invaded the Mexican border city of Reynosa after gunmen in vehicles killed 14 people, including taxis drivers, workers and a nursing student, and security forces responded with operations that left four suspects dead.

A federal legislator even filed a non-binding resolution in Mexico's Congress in early January to protest beatings and robberies by the unit. AdAs recently as November, a Tamaulipas business association charged that officers in the GOPES unit had broken into a member’s home and stolen cash, other belongings and appliances. Tamaulipas has seen rival drug cartels fighting the longest, bloodiest, best-equipped turf war in Mexico's history for over a decade now. The GOPES unit isn't the first of Tamaulipas' problem with abusive police forces. But unknown to the GOPES unit, the pickup was part of a larger convoy of vehicles carrying migrants, including a Guatemalan migrant smuggler who knew all the victims.