Posted on 04/18/2006 6:14:18 PM PDT by Rick_Michael
TULTITLAN, Mexico - Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money.
While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.
And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people — compared with 12 percent in the United States.
The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant.
Virginia Sanchez, who lives near the railroad tracks that carry Central Americans north to the U.S. border, said such shootings in Tultitlan are common.
"At night, you hear the gunshots, and it's the judiciales (state police) chasing the migrants," she said. "It's not fair to kill these people. It's not fair in the United States and it's not fair here."
Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail.
"If you're carrying any money, they take it from you — federal, state, local police, all of them," said Carlos Lopez, a 28-year-old farmhand from Guatemala crouching in a field near the tracks in Tultitlan, waiting to climb onto a northbound freight train.
Lopez said he had been shaken down repeatedly in 15 days of traveling through Mexico.
"The soldiers were there as soon as we crossed the river," he said. "They said, 'You can't cross ... unless you leave something for us.'"
Jose Ramos, 18, of El Salvador, said the extortion occurs at every stop in Mexico, until migrants are left penniless and begging for food.
"If you're on a bus, they pull you off and search your pockets and if you have any money, they keep it and say, 'Get out of here,'" Ramos said.
Maria Elena Gonzalez, who lives near the tracks, said female migrants often complain about abusive police.
"They force them to strip, supposedly to search them, but the purpose is to sexually abuse them," she said.
Others said they had seen migrants beaten to death by police, their bodies left near the railway tracks to make it look as if they had fallen from a train.
The Mexican government acknowledges that many federal, state and local officials are on the take from the people-smugglers who move hundreds of thousands of Central Americans north, and that migrants are particularly vulnerable to abuse by corrupt police.
The National Human Rights Commission, a government-funded agency, documented the abuses south of the U.S. border in a December report.
"One of the saddest national failings on immigration issues is the contradiction in demanding that the North respect migrants' rights, which we are not capable of guaranteeing in the South," commission president Jose Luis Soberanes said.
In the United States, mostly Mexican immigrants have staged rallies pressuring Congress to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants rather than making them felons and deputizing police to deport them. The Mexican government has spoken out in support of the immigrants' cause.
While Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said Monday that "Mexico is a country with a clear, defined and generous policy toward migrants," the nation of 105 million has legalized only 15,000 immigrants in the past five years, and many undocumented migrants who are detained are deported.
Although Mexico objects to U.S. authorities detaining Mexican immigrants, police and soldiers usually cause the most trouble for migrants in Mexico, even though they aren't technically authorized to enforce immigration laws.
And while Mexicans denounce the criminalization of their citizens living without papers in the United States, Mexican law classifies undocumented immigration as a felony punishable by up to two years in prison, although deportation is more common.
The number of undocumented migrants detained in Mexico almost doubled from 138,061 in 2002 to 240,269 last year. Forty-two percent were Guatemalan, 33 percent Honduran and most of the rest Salvadoran.
Like the United States, Mexico is becoming reliant on immigrant labor. Last year, then-director of Mexico's immigration agency, Magdalena Carral, said an increasing number of Central Americans were staying in Mexico, rather than just passing through on their way to the U.S.
She said sectors of the Mexican economy facing labor shortages often use undocumented workers because the legal process for work visas is inefficient.
While Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said Monday that "Mexico is a country with a clear, defined and generous policy toward migrants," the nation of 105 million has legalized only 15,000 immigrants in the past five years, and many undocumented migrants who are detained are deported.
Do as I say, not as I do. I need to save this for ammunition in my next "discussion" with a moonbat! Thanks for the post.
Mexico’s immigration law grants preferences to scientists and other professionals likely to contribute to “national progress.” Peasants with third-grade educations aren’t high on their wish list; in fact they do everything they can to keep them out. Local observers have often alleged Mexico’s brutal treatment of impoverished Central Americans crossing its borders. Yet according to Mexican officials, millions of uneducated, unskilled campesinos are just what the American economy needs.
There was a good documentary on Discovery which followed four Hondurans as they made their way through Mexico. They constantly have to avoid police and gangs which prey on them. A few get killed or maimed jumping on that train that they ride.
The ironic thing is Mexico has a law forbidding giving any aid whatsoever to an illegal...not even a glass of water.
The cops will let them go for a small bribe as that is the Mexican way.
I haven't seen this at all in Mexico. I've had contact a dozen times with Central Americans citizens who have walked and got as far as Mexico City. Groups of 20-50, well fed, when we inquire all say that they have gotten decent treatment. I've seen tears in the eyes of some of the guards, who sees how much the folks have suffered, how much they paid, how much they risk, each has a tragic story.
DO REMEMBER there in the Ole USA, that it was MEXICO who opened it's arms to 65,000 people fleeing Hitler Friendly Facism in Spain in 1939, The DEMOCRATIC Pres FDR, closed his borders to these women and children who had fled their homeland. Many Jewish people couldn't find a home in the USA also settled in here at Mexico. So, give us credit here in Mexico, THIS problem is like a TSUNAMI, a Natural Phenomena happening all around the globre. I am sure there are isolated cases of abuse and injustice.
FYI, many of those deported back to Mexico speak of friendly, kind and human compassion and fair treatment by guards in the USA.
Should be; won't be.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
It's so sad that this is one of the ONLY fair and objective storys I have seen from the AP- It's a shame that they don't cover the "other side' of the story more often.
I'll be waiting for the Holy United Nations to condemn this blatant violation of the basic human rights of illegal immigrants to break whatever laws they please.
You just know that if the US had such policies that the UN would concoct some human rights commission to stop it. Yet strangely, since Mexico is not the US.....
So shrug, or lock and load.
Except for the use of the term "undocumented migrant" as opposed to "illegal alien".
I say you are full of sh*t and a big lying hypocrite. I am from Central America, and I talk with a lot of people who made it here from Central America by way of mejico, and they tell me horror stories of beatings, jail, rape, robbery, deportation and even death. Not just from gangs, from the police; the must corrupt police on the face of the earth. Take your sh*t out of this site. 'La mordida' is a way of life in mejico; along with lies and crime.
Gedeon3, sounds like all you can do is spout bad filth. I am telling you in my experience I have found Mexican officials to be decent. I viist prisons, and am not talking about what I READ in the paper. Granted there were be some cases where abuse and violence does show up. IN MY experience I haven't seen it. That is the way I see it in OLE Mexico. Let's try to make Free Republic a place where we can dialog and exchange ideas instead of shouting epitats of filth and hate at each other. We need to understand each other. Animo
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