Thread: 72 bodies found at Mexico ranch

Official: 72 found dead in Mexico may be migrants
By MARK STEVENSON and E. EDUARDO CASTILLO Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
Aug. 25, 2010, 11:20AM


MEXICO CITY — A survivor has told police that 72 people found dead at a ranch near the Mexican border with Texas were migrants kidnapped by an armed group, a federal official said Wednesday.

The bodies of 58 men and 14 women were discovered Tuesday when Marines manning a checkpoint on a highway in the northern state of Tamaulipas were approached by a wounded man who said he had been attacked by gang gunmen at a nearby ranch.

A federal official said that man had identified himself an illegal migrant. The man said he and other migrants had been kidnapped by an armed group and taken to the ranch in San Fernando, a town about 100 miles south of Brownsville, Texas, according to the federal official, who had access to the investigation. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

The official said police believe the migrants were mostly from Central America.

It was unclear if all 72 were killed at the same time — or why. Another federal official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators believe the victims were killed within recent days.

The newspaper Reforma, citing a police report, reported that that the migrants had refused to pay extortion fees demanded by the armed group. The federal officials could not immediately confirm that.

Investigators had not determined who was behind the massacre. But one of the federal officials noted that the area is controlled by the Zetas drug cartel, which has diversified into trafficking of migrants trying to reach the United States.

Drug gangs often demand payment from migrants trying to cross the border and sometimes kidnap them, holding them hostage while demanding money from relatives in the United States or their home countries.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 70823.html
_________________
Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce said that our immigration laws are fine, but that "we have broken politicians." Truer words were never spoken

Last edited by jamesw62 on Thu Aug 26, 2010 2:36 am; edited 1 time in total"

Originally Posted by Rai7965

Mass graves have been turning up with increasing frequency in Mexico's drug war, which has claimed the lives of an estimated 28,000 people since 2006 despite a military show of force in Mexican cities by the government of president Felipe Calderon.

[b]
This while the Mexican government has determined that patrolling the streets of New York searching out “biasesâ€

Geeze...and mexican newspapers are warning them that WE will shoot them if they don't have papers?

Mexicans killed 72 illegal aliens from Central and South America

Can you imagine the demonstration that would be going on if 72 illegal aliens had been kill in the U.S.

Where are all of the advocates for illegal aliens when they are killed in Mexico?

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Mexicans killed 72 illegal aliens from Central and South America

Can you imagine the demonstration that would be going on if 72 illegal aliens had been kill in the U.S.

Where are all of the advocates for illegal aliens when they are killed in Mexico?

yes that's a VERY good question ...

Originally Posted by marquis

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Mexicans killed 72 illegal aliens from Central and South America

Can you imagine the demonstration that would be going on if 72 illegal aliens had been kill in the U.S.

Where are all of the advocates for illegal aliens when they are killed in Mexico?

yes that's a VERY good question ...

They'd get machine gunned. mexico is VERY racist not only towards the US, but to everyone else who is not mexican (Guatemalans especially). I have no idea why they think they are so superior. They live in a failed state that is turning into a vortex of pure evil and they can't rise up and do a damn thing about it so they come up here to take, take, and take some more.

Mexicans killed 72 illegal aliens from Central and South America

When will Congress have something to say about this?

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Mexicans killed 72 illegal aliens from Central and South America

When will Congress have something to say about this?

since it didnt happen in the US, our lame government will say nothing about it

Originally Posted by jamesw62

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Mexicans killed 72 illegal aliens from Central and South America

When will Congress have something to say about this?

since it didnt happen in the US, our lame government will say nothing about it

Do we want or need them to? They will just use it as an excuse to push for open borders. They will pull our heartstrings for the "poor immigrants".

Massacre of migrants in Mexico an 'outrage'

Calderón aide condemns smugglers' murder of 72

by Chris Hawley and Sergio Solache - Aug. 26, 2010 12:00 AM
Republic Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY - Mexican smugglers killed 72 migrants from Central and South America and piled the bodies in a ranch house, the Mexican government said Wednesday, in a discovery that highlights the growing ruthlessness of Mexico's crime gangs.

The corpses of 58 men and 14 women were found Tuesday after an Ecuadorean migrant escaped from the house and went to a highway checkpoint for help near San Fernando, in Tamaulipas state about 100 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. The man had a bullet wound in his neck.


When a squad of Mexican marines went to investigate, they came under fire from several gunmen, the navy said in a written statement Wednesday.

One marine and three gunmen died in the battle. A minor, apparently a member of the gang, was arrested.

The motive for the killings was unclear, but immigrant smugglers frequently hold migrants captive and force their relatives to pay ransom, said Alejandro Poiré, a national-security adviser to President Felipe Calderón. Some migrants are also forced to carry drugs or perform other work for the gangs.

Marines discovered a cache of 21 rifles and shotguns, 101 magazines for ammunition, two belts that contained .50-caliber rounds, bulletproof vests, helmets and four pickup trucks painted to look like Mexican army vehicles.

The marines found the bodies piled in a nearby ranch house, Poiré told reporters. The dead included victims from El Salvador, Brazil, Honduras, Ecuador and other Latin American countries, though it was unclear if they were all killed at the same time, he said.

Poiré called the killings "an absolute outrage."

"It deserves the unanimous condemnation of our entire society," he said.

Mark Toner, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, called the killings a "horribly tragic event."

In recent months, Mexican police have found two other sites with dozens of bodies.

On July 23, police discovered 51 corpses, many of them buried in shallow mass graves, in a field near Monterrey. And on May 29, they found 55 bodies that had been thrown into an abandoned mine near the central Mexican town of Taxco.

Prosecutors said they believe the victims at those two sites were killed over several years by drug hit men. Few of the bodies have been identified.

In the San Fernando case, investigators believe the killers were members of the Zetas, a brutal crime gang that broke off from the Gulf drug cartel in recent years, Poiré said. The Zetas have branched into immigrant smuggling, kidnappings for ransom, music piracy, and even gasoline and oil theft.

The Zetas have recently formed alliances with Central American gangs that extort money from migrants traveling to the United States on rail cars.

"The migration problem, which has always been complicated, is getting even worse because of these gangs who are using immigration as a business," said Fernando Neira, an immigration expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

During a six-month period from September 2008 to February 2009, gangs kidnapped at least 9,758 migrants and held them for ransom, a report by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission said.

At least 91 of those victims were kidnapped with the help of Mexican police, the commission said. It accused federal authorities of not doing enough to protect immigrants on Mexican soil.

"This gruesome discovery should be a wake-up call to the Mexican authorities," Wende Gozan, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International USA, said on Wednesday.

Poiré said the Zetas' involvement in immigrant smuggling shows the government is gaining ground in its nearly 4-year-old crackdown on drug cartels.

"The fact that organized crime is turning to the extortion and kidnapping of migrants as a form of financing, and sometimes recruiting, indicates . . . that some groups are confronting a very difficult situation," he said.

About 95 percent of the 63,175 illegal immigrants detained by Mexican authorities last year were from four countries: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. Most are trying to reach the United States, the National Human Rights Commission says.

Reach the reporter at chris .hawley@arizonarepublic .com.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... z0xjscvDH5