Thread: Groupo Beta member shot dead

UNION-TRIBUNE

6:45 a.m. March 14, 2008

TIJUANA: An officer with Mexico's federal migrant protection unit, Grupo Beta, has died of gunshot wounds after an attack late Wednesday near the border, the Baja California Attorney General's Office reported yesterday.
Alejandro Rivera Meléndez, 34, and another officer were attacked shortly before midnight Wednesday in the upper part of Colonia Libertad, a Tijuana neighborhood that abuts the U.S. border at San Ysidro. Rivera was pronounced dead at a Tijuana hospital, according to the attorney general's statement.
Rivera was a member of Tijuana's municipal police department assigned to Grupo Beta, the statement said. The other officer was not identified, and his condition was not known.

Nearly 150 spent casings were found at the site. –S.D.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexi ... urder.html

An officer with Mexico's federal migrant protection unit

They have a migrant protection unit?

Grupo Beta. Grupo Beta, the Mexican police unit that began operations in Tijuana in 1990 to protect northbound migrants from criminals, has developed a reputation for honesty and efficiency. Grupo Beta is an agency of the immigration service, which is part of the Interior Ministry.

The Tijuana unit is composed of 45 men and women carefully selected from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and then given psychological testing and extensive training. After being sworn in, Grupo Beta members are given a substantial salary increase and a life insurance policy, as well as 15 days off each six months.

Some say that one key to the success of Grupo Beta is its zero tolerance for breaches of discipline.

http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=1177_0_2_0
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Grupo Beta & U.S. Senate Seemingly Working Hand-In-Hand

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7187 ... 2-2657.jpg
Grupo Beta, an aid group funded by Mexico, uses blue flags to mark water stations south of the border. Image Credit: MAYA ALLERUZZO - THE WASHINGTON TIMES

In light of the reviews of the latest version of the senate bill to address immigration - "Senate immigration bill 'far worse' than in '86", Washington Times (free subscription), July 19, 2006, we now have Mexico funding efforts to stage their citizens at supply stations near the border. These stations prepare those who intend to cross the border illegally through the provision of food and water.

This from the Washington Times Insider -

Mexico funds staging areas for illegals
By Jerry Seper - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - August 18, 2005

The Mexican staging area for illegal aliens that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson demanded this week be bulldozed is among hundreds of similar sites along the border sponsored and maintained by the Mexican government.

Many of the sites are marked with blue flags and pennants to signal that water is available. Others, such as the Las Chepas site that Mr. Richardson denounced, are a collection of old, mostly abandoned buildings or ranch houses where illegals gather for water and other supplies -- sometimes bartering with smugglers, or "coyotes," for passage north.

Las Chepas, law-enforcement authorities said, also is a center for drug smugglers looking to move marijuana and cocaine into the United States.

Rafael Laveaga, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, yesterday said his government "has a duty and obligation by law to protect Mexican citizens at home and abroad."

He said record high temperatures in the desert areas south of New Mexico and Arizona this year had resulted in the death of many illegal aliens.

"We try to spread the word on the dangerous conditions these people will face in the desert, along with reports of historically high temperatures," he said. "What we are doing is part of an effort to prevent those deaths."

Many of the Mexican aid stations are maintained by Grupo Beta, a Mexican governmentfunded humanitarian organization founded in the early 1990s. Driving through the desert regions south of the border in brightly painted orange trucks, Grupo Beta's job is to protect migrants along the border, not arrest them.

In April, Grupo Beta worked with the Mexican military and the Sonora State Preventive Police to move would-be illegal aliens out of the desert areas just south of the U.S. border to locations east and west of Naco, Ariz., to avoid the Minuteman Project volunteers holding a vigil on the border.

A branch of Mexico's National Migration Institute, Grupo Beta also helped pass out fliers warning migrants that the Minuteman volunteers, whom they described as "armed vigilantes," were waiting across the border to hurt them.

In addition to the aid stations, the Mexican government has distributed more than a million copies of a 32-page handbook advising migrants how to cross into the United States. The book, known as "Guia del Migrante Mexicano," or "Guide for the Mexican Migrant," contains tips on avoiding apprehension by U.S. authorities.

Aid stations for illegal aliens also exist in the United States, many of them established and supplied by various humanitarian organizations such as Humane Borders, a Tucson faith-based group that targets illegal aliens who the organization said might otherwise die in the desert.

Humane Borders, established in 2001, has 70 water stations along the U.S. side of the border, each with two 50-gallon tanks next to a 30-foot-mast with a blue flag.

Many are on well-traveled migrant routes. Others have been placed, with permission, on property owned by Pima County, Ariz.; the National Park Service; the Bureau of Land Management; and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Another U.S. group, known as No More Deaths, set up an aid camp last month near Arivaca, Ariz., helping stranded border-crossers with food, water and medical assistance. The Ark of the Covenant camp will remain in operation through September.
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http://maxine-log.blogspot.com/2006/07/ ... rking.html[img]

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
Franklin D. Roosevelt [/img]

It amazes me that people can view Mexico as anything other than an enemy. There are times in our country's past when this sort of nonsense would have resulted in a shotgun being shoved in their face.