Thread: Misleading headline says Border Patrol enjoys torturing immi

Sunday, 13 April 2008
Misleading headline says Border Patrol enjoys torturing immigrants
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS

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Foreign News Report


The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.

(note: the following is a short portion out of the first of two parts of a long article titled "Authorities acknowledge that the Border Patrol enjoys torturing immigrants."

The article is based on a reporter's interviews with the mayor of Agua Prieta, Sonora, and also with the Mexican Consul in neighboring Douglas, Arizona and with a local area priest. The article is featured at the head of the "Migration" section of the large (40 some papers) "O.E.M." nationwide chain of Mexican papers; a search of some half dozen of those papers today shows that this particular column is getting nationwide distribution. However, the headline accusation is based solely on comments by the priest. Readers who know Spanish can access the article directly where we first located it at

http://www.oem.com.mx/lavozdelafrontera ... 661666.htm

however, we have no way of knowing how long it will be available. The pertinent portion of the article follows.)

"And the priest Cayetano Cabrera Duran said: "Discriminated against, exploited, ill-regarded, set apart. That's how migrants are treated here. There are many who make their living exploiting them. Their appearance alone causes rejection. The girls usually say "I would never marry one like that"."

"The Border Patrol usually shows them no mercy. One would say that they enjoy putting them at the verge of suffering. They discover them quickly and they let them keep going through the desert until they fall, exhausted. They crowd men and women into their vehicles, drive at hair raising speeds and suddenly brake abruptly so they hurt themselves. At night they accost them, they leave them out in the open, under intense cold. Under the rays of the Sun. More and more they arrive more ill, more beaten, discouraged, defeated, they go back as out of their minds, touched in the head."
El Debate (Culiacan, Sinaloa) 4/13/08

The main editorial comments on the state of Sinaloa's crime wave. The first three months of the year brought 172 murders and these totaled 81 in March alone, making Sinaloa one of the top states for executions in the whole country. The editorial ends by commenting that "federal authorities have to intervene and help state agencies to bring the wave of murders to a halt and to reestablish tranquility."

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a.m. (Leon, Guanajuato) 4/13/08

Seven supervisory rank police officers in the Leon area flunked a polygraph test. All are being fired.

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El Diario (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 4/13/08

A bill to de-criminalize the illegal entry of aliens into Mexico was approved by the Mexican Chamber of Deputies (read: House of Representatives) in April of 2006 but it has not yet been acted upon by the Mexican Senate. The latest scheduled vote on the issue was cancelled for lack of quorum. At present, entering Mexico without documentation is regarded as a violation of the "General Law of Population" which, though not applied in practice, results in the fact that migrants are frequent victims of extortion. Article 123 of that law provides for imprisonment for up to two years and a fine of up to 5 thousand pesos for aliens who enter the country illegally.

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Frontera (Tijuana, Baja Calif.) 4/13/08

Tijuana registered seven murders in less than 24 hours. And last night a group of thugs attacked the house of the commander of the Centenario precinct of the Tijuana police; the criminals arrived during a family reunion which included children and also the commander's police officer escort. The commander's daughter notified him of the street presence of suspicious individuals so that when they did arrive their attack was repelled and two of the thugs were killed. A round did hit a gas tank which exploded in the house and started a fire; four persons were burned and some of the children were also wounded in the firefight. The assailants wore ski masks; when these were taken off from one of the dead thugs it turned out he was an active duty Tijuana police officer, though this was not officially confirmed. The state's AG office linked this latest assault to the arrest of three persons (our report of 4/9/08 relates.) And in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, a car-to-car attack with assault rifles ended the life of a State Public Security police supervisor.

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El Universal (Mexico City) 4/13/08

The ex-mayor of Buena Vista Tomatlan, Michoacan, was killed with shots to the head by a man who then fled. In Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, there were three execution victims, the same number as in Michoacan. Baja California added one more. And Culiacan, Sinaloa, reported its twelfth kidnapping; these are usually carried out by persons wearing police or military uniforms.

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La Cronica de Hoy (Mexico City) 4/13/08

(note: a long, fifteen paragraph op/column by Saul Arellano titled "That's why they don't want them" generally deals with socio-political dissatisfaction in Mexico and ends as follows):

In Mexico there are people who live "dying of hunger." As long as this goes on, as long as corruption keeps pervading in the whole country, as long as the impunity of crimes keeps on, as long as they lie and lie more to us, there will be less acceptance by the citizens both of the politicians and of the traditional parties. The people simply don't want them."

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Milenio (Mexico City) 4/13/08

A search warrant carried out at #101 Santander de Jimenez, Colonia Fonhapo, Ciudad Miguel Aleman, state of Tamaulipas, turned up 228 packages of marihuana weighing a total of 3 tons, 6.4 kilos. No arrests were made.



www.borderfirereport.net

The article is based on a reporter's interviews with the mayor of Agua Prieta, Sonora, and also with the Mexican Consul in neighboring Douglas, Arizona and with a local area priest. The article is featured at the head of the "Migration" section of the large (40 some papers) "O.E.M." nationwide chain of Mexican papers; a search of some half dozen of those papers today shows that this particular column is getting nationwide distribution. However, the headline accusation is based solely on comments by the priest. Readers who know Spanish can access the article directly where we first located it at

File an official compaint with the Mexican government over this slander and false propoganda.