Thread: Migrants Fall Prey to Mexican Gangs on Way to the U.S.

Migrants Fall Prey to Mexican Gangs on Way to the U.S.

July 19, 2011

By NICHOLAS CASEY
MEXICO CITY—A Catholic priest says that scores of Central American immigrants were kidnapped in a mass abduction by a drug gang in June. But weeks later, Mexican authorities haven't found the immigrants or made any arrests.

The case highlights an uncomfortable irony: Mexico, a country that has long defended the rights of its citizens in the U.S.—illegal or not—has been unable to defend the rights of Central American migrants that cross Mexico illegally on their way north.

New Threat on The Way North
Kidnapping Central American migrants that cross Mexico on their way north is one of the latest rackets of organized-crime groups.

The country's interior ministry says it knows of only five immigrants who were kidnapped in the June incident. The priest, Alejandro Solalinde, said witnesses who escaped told him that between 60 and 80 vanished. Mexico's attorney general's office said it couldn't confirm that the crime happened at all but is working to gather clues in the state of Veracruz.

Kidnapping Central American and Mexican immigrants is one of the latest rackets of Mexican organized-crime groups, which are expanding beyond drugs into pirated DVDs, illegal alcohol sales and business extortion.

Just this year, more than 4,000 immigrants have been rescued by the Mexican army and federal police from their captors, according to government statistics. Because authorities say only a fraction of those kidnapped are ever rescued, the figures suggest that gangs kidnap tens of thousands of migrants each year.

The victims, almost always headed to the U.S., are captured by gangs where they are ransomed back to relatives, forcibly recruited as workers or sometimes sold into prostitution.

"It's a real business," said Antonio Mazzitelli, of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, who says not only kidnapping money is at stake.

As much as $2,000 in fees is collected for each immigrant by those shuttling migrants across the border, the U.N. estimates. Add to that earnings from ransoms and illicit trade and the figure going into gang coffers is far higher.

These dangers, along with decreased economic opportunity in the U.S., may be contributing to declines in arrivals. The Pew Research Center says that Mexican arrivals, who are the majority of Latino immigrants and a proxy for Central Americans, have fallen every year since 2006, to 404,000 in 2010.

Still, Mexico is taking some steps with the aim of curbing human trafficking for those who do decide to cross. The government recently passed a series of reforms aimed at clamping down on the trade, which will restrict bail on suspected traffickers and offer protection to witnesses.

However, Rev. Solalinde's case shows how difficult it is for Mexican authorities to solve crimes when they occur. The witnesses, other Central American migrants who were already travelling illegally, were too afraid to report the crime to Mexican authorities, worried they would get deported themselves. Instead, they went to Rev. Solalinde's church, which is trusted by migrants because it runs shelters along a stretch of forests crossed by migrants headed north, the priest said.

Rev. Solalinde said the crime occurred on June 24, when a group of about 250 immigrants from nations including Guatemala and Honduras left a shelter he ran in Oaxaca state, boarding a train bound for Veracruz.

The priest said the witnesses, migrants who escaped the kidnapping, told him the train came to an unexpected stop in a remote stretch of forest near the town of Medias Aguas, a short distance from the Veracruz state border. The train cars were then surrounded by a half-dozen suburban sport-utility vehicles and armed men emerged "telling them to get off the train," Rev. Solalinde said. The witnesses estimated that between 60 and 80 immigrants were taken away and haven't been heard from since.

But officials so far say they have been unable to confirm the priest's account.

Mexico's National Immigration Institute said it dispatched investigators to talk to witnesses but the few who have surfaced said only five immigrants were kidnapped. It is unclear whether any victims will be found.

Stopping crimes against immigrants also presents challenges for the immigration agency. Since the 1990s, it has operated an outfit called Grupo Beta that is charged with protecting immigrants from criminals. But most agents don't carry weapons, and must coordinate with municipal and state police departments when confronting armed crime groups.

Some police agencies themselves have been corrupted by crime groups eager to exploit immigrants. René Zenteno, the deputy interior secretary, recently ticked off recent cases, including the conviction this April of three municipal police in Puebla, where authorities helped a crime ring kidnap and murder immigrants. "Criminal bands trafficking people are certainly involved with the police," Mr. Zenteno said.

National Immigration Institute boarder agents have been accused of crimes as well. In May, its director, Salvador Beltrán del RÃ*o, reported that 40 employees were under criminal investigation for the abuse of immigrants.

They were found after a group of 200 agents were suspended for failing lie-detector tests. About 1,200 agents—less than a quarter of the total—were tested, suggesting the problem could be more widespread.

Alberto Herrera, who heads the Mexico office of human-rights group Amnesty International, said that in addition to corruption, agencies charged to protect immigrants tend to avoid responsibility for taking cases.

"Many state officials don't think this kind of crime is part of their job, that it belongs to the federal government or immigration," he said. "They'll call accusations 'rumor' and not investigate them."

State and local agencies, he said, should be the first line of defense given their presence in remote areas like Medias Aguas.

Typical of the reluctance to take cases, the state interior secretary, Gerardo Buganza, told local reporters in June that Veracruz offered safe passage for all immigrants and that the priest's account was false.

Later, the state backtracked from Mr. Buganza's stance. A spokeswoman from the state attorney general's office said Mr. Buganza, who didn't reply to a request for comment, was "clearly an error," and that prosecutors were working to interview witnesses about what happened at Medias Aguas. "Clearly if there is an accusation, we must do everything we can to investigate it," she said.

http://online.wsj.com

Our boarder needs to be a bigger threat to these illegals trying to invade our country.