Posted on 05/16/2006 2:15:57 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) -
Mexico said Tuesday that it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops on the border become directly involved in detaining migrants.
Mexican border officials also said they worried that sending troops to heavily trafficked regions would push illegal migrants into more perilous areas of the U.S.-Mexican border to avoid detection.
President Bush announced Monday that he would send 6,000 National Guard troops to the 2,000-mile border, but they would provide intelligence and surveillance support to Border Patrol agents, not catch and detain illegal immigrants.
"If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez told a Mexico City radio station. He did not offer further details.
Mexican officials worry the crackdown will lead to more deaths. Since Washington toughened security in Texas and California in 1994, migrants have flooded Arizona's hard-to-patrol desert and deaths have spiked. Migrant groups estimate 500 people died trying to cross the border in 2005. The Border Patrol reported 473 deaths in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
In Ciudad Juarez, Julieta Nunez Gonzalez, local representative of the Mexican government's National Immigration Institute, said Tuesday she will ask the government to send its migrant protection force, known as Grupo Beta, to more remote sections of the border.
Sending the National Guard "will not stop the flow of migrants, to the contrary, it will probably go up," as people try to get into the U.S. in the hope that they could benefit from a possible amnesty program, Nunez said.
Juan Canche, 36, traveled more than 1,200 miles to the border from the southern town of Izamal and said nothing would stop him from trying to cross.
"Even with a lot of guards and soldiers in place, we have to jump that puddle," said Canche, referring to the drought-stricken Rio Grande dividing Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. "My family is hungry and there is no work in my land. I have to risk it."
Some Mexican newspapers criticized President Vicente Fox for not taking a stronger stand against the measure, even though Fox called Bush to express his concerns.
A political cartoon in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma depicted Bush as a gorilla carrying a club with a flattened Fox stuck to it.
Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Tuesday that Mexico accepted Bush's statement that the sending in the National Guard didn't mean militarizing the area. He also said Mexico remained "optimistic" that the U.S. Senate would approve an immigration reform "in the interests of both countries."
Aguilar noted that Bush expressed support for the legalization of some immigrants and implementation of a guest worker program.
"This is definitely not a militarization," said Aguilar, who also dismissed as "absolutely false" rumors that Mexico would send its own troops to the border in response.
Bush has said sending the National Guard is intended as a stopgap measure while the Border Patrol builds up resources to more effectively secure the border.
In Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, Honduran Antonio Auriel said he would make it into the U.S.
"Soldiers on the border? That won't stop me," he said. "I'll swim the river and jump the wall. I'm going to arrive in the United States."
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Associated Press Writer Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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Sorry dude, this country's in a suicidal state of mind, like the rest of the West. It seems to me that we won't stop being suicidal until we break our addiction to the socialism and the huge nanny state. Imagine all those bureaucrats with no government job to go to? I bet some of them would pick lettuce rather than starve. Imagine no minimum wage. Imagine no government schools. Imagine no War on Drugs enriching criminals in Mexico and South America. Imagine not living with the fraud that is Social Security. Imagine no federal income tax and no IRS. Imagine no welfare state. Imagine no free emergency room care.
It won't happen because Americans are too addicted to the things that attract illegals.
just miscomm - no problem - FReegards
I agree regarding shooting foot PR wise. I think its more like a head shot. It almost makes you think they're doing it on purpose. Like the governor of baja talking about the reconquista. This is waking a slumbering giant. this is going to snowball.
Wish I could help you.
Lets just stop buying goods from Mexico and stop going to their resorts and see how long they stay at this garbage.
You called it. Nobody would look up from their X Box. We're finished.
Isn't that what we've been saying all along?
You mean like how someone in the White House took on Saddam Hussein?
Too late Vic, the Supreme Court of Chief Justice is not the same court of yore. Take a hike.
Of course they will, they have to. As more protection of the border is put in place the further from cities and towns the border bunnies must go to get to an unguarded spot on the border. GUESS what "Grupo" handles the taxi service? We saw this on all three (to date) Border Watch Operations. GB would be there the first few days driving their orange pickups around picking up all the straglers that had not gotten the news that Texas Minutemen were in the area. After they (GB) got all of them out all we would see were the ones crossing by themselves that had done it many times before. The coyotes had split. No profit in getting busted on every attempt to cross. They go to more remote sections of the border.
It's a sad day in America when the President cares more about what Vicente Fox thinks than what the American people think....
"Snipers on the border,that won't stop m...."
LOL. I had the same thought and double-checked. Stunning.
When the world turned upside down I wish someone would have told me.
It is, sadly, the appropriate feeling. You are facing reality. Take care of yourself and your own.
Are you kidding me? That would be like Americans blaming traitorous democrats and the drive-by media for leaking top secret national security anti-terrorist measures and destroying our ability to track terrorists by phone anymore.
Face it. We in the U.S. are dumb, Mexico is dumber.
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