The freed migrants, including 20 minors and two pregnant women, were seized in Tamaulipas state as they were trying to cross into the United States, a government statement said yesterday.
They were captured in the same state where 72 migrants were found massacred at a ranch apparently owned by the Los Zetas drug cartel in 2010.
Acting on an anonymous tip, the army found the group being held at gunpoint in "precarious, unhealthy and overcrowded conditions" on a property in the town of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz on the US-Mexican border, according to Sanchez.
"They were held against their will while the criminal group contacted their relatives by telephone demanding ransom be paid to the captors," Sanchez said.
More From This Section
"Everything seems to indicate that the migrants were taken by smugglers commonly known as 'coyotes,' and these offenders handed them over to criminal groups."
A man guarding the migrants was arrested during the raid and others were being sought, interior ministry spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said.
Among those freed were 77 Salvadorans, 50 Guatemalans, 23 Hondurans and an Indian national, Sanchez said. Another 14 were Mexicans.
Around 140,000 Central Americans illegally enter Mexico's southern frontier each year in the hope of eventually reaching the United States, according to government figures.
The Mesoamerican Migrant Movement says some 70,000 Central Americans disappeared in Mexico from 2006-2012, a period that coincides with the intensification of the drug war by former president Felipe Calderon.
Calderon ordered a military crackdown on powerful drug cartels in 2006, which was followed by a massive spike in violence that claimed tens of thousands of lives.