This is a source for analysis, interviews, and commentary on security in Latin America. Herein you will find rumors, the results of off the record interviews, and information you'll not find in international or United States news media.
I've been on the road for work this week, so before the weekend I wanted to share here a few spots on the Internet where there has been a little early coverage of my book on the MS-13.
One of the few bloggers I read regularly, Zen Pundit, received an early copy of my book from my publisher. He was kind enough to devote some time for a post. Thanks!
Over at the Dallas Morning News' bookblog, reporter Diane Solis put up a brief review on my book and a related book by Tom Diaz. I've not read Tom's book, but I'll be sure to buy it. He operates a blog called Fairly Civil.
Our friends at Mexidata.info also posted a note on the book release.
And investigative reporter Jonathan Franklin, who recently published a piece - The Real Con Air - on deportation, interviewed me for this piece, and was nice enough to get the book's title in there. Thanks Jonathan!
Finally, my book is available for Kindle readers, and will be on stands July 7th.
We've finally finished tweaking the blog for my book's website, focused on the MS-13.
The blog will serve as extra space for media items, announcements, speaking engagements, and a catch all for thoughts, observations, etc, on the Mara Salvatrucha, immigration, deportation, street gangs and organized crime.
I wanted to share here a post from a blog I frequent, Standing FIRM.
This post is about the 287(g) statute that allows ICE to essentially deputize local authorities so illegal immigrants may be arrested by local cops simply for being illegal.
Below is the first two paragraphs of the post, with a link for the rest:
I have been posting for at least a year about the negative impacts of the so-called 287(g) program that allows local police agencies to enforce federal immigration laws. The most notable case of 287(g)’s negative impact on communities is that of Maricopa County and our food friend Joe Arpaio. 287(g) is the program that gives Arpaio the authority to continue his reign of terror in Arizona.
Recently the Police Foundation, a non-partisan Think Tank whose stated goal is “Supporting innovation and improvements in policing“, released a study on local enforcement of federal immigration laws. The result? To be brief: Federal Immigration laws should not be enforced by local police agencies. Period.
Read the rest here
Guatemalans living in the United States have come together to blow the whistle on abusive deportation raids.
The Guatemalan Community Defense Network (GCDN) came together to avoid "by any means" the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detentions. So far, they have freed at least 60 undocumented workers.
Rhode Island, Arizona, and Chicago are the areas where this group is the most organized.
The defense network is manned by volunteers, who remain on watch for a period of a few days.
"We have an emergency number that works 24 hours. In case ICE detains an emigrant on the street, or tried to knock down the door of his house, the undocumented persons must call immediately, so that we can arrive and protect his rights," Shanna Kurland, a GCDN organizer told Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre.
In Rhode Island, a local Guatemalan radio station is part of the network. It broadcasts 24 hours, and when the network phones start ringing, one of the volunteers calls the radio station, which begins to broadcast the address of the ICE deportation raid.
Those who arrive, bring cameras, and demand that the law is followed, and that rights are protected. The 60 undocumented workers who have been released were set free because when ICE executed the raid, they did so without deportation orders, which is illegal, explained Prensa Libre.
One other item of note from the Prensa Libre article:
Maricela Garcia, Latin Politics Forum representative in Chicago, asserted that the Guatemalans and Central Americans adopted a new lobbying procedure without having to leave their homes. “Fear reigns among the migrants; they have fear of being captured or deported, for which reason now they get together in homes and invite their friends to write lobbying letters for a migratory reform and afterward they send them to the congressmen of the whole country”, said Garcia. This new method is called “congressmen’s fiestas.”
As the immigration debate begins to gain traction again in US mainstream media and inside the Beltway, I thought it would be interesting to put a little perspective on the spin:
Below is a translation prepared by some friends at the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers. The original information was prepared by the Center of Investigation of Economic and Community Political Action, based in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.
Every day, at least 165 people in the state of Chiapas lose hope and leave for the United States. Fifteen years ago such emigration was unnoticeable, but now it has turned this southernmost Mexican state into one that most exemplifies this trend.
The main reasons that people leave are lack of employment and natural disasters such as the hurricane of 2005 that affected 41 cities in this region.
The history of Mexican migration to the US began in the 1880s when Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railway companies began to “import” cheap labor, the majority of which was indigenous Mexicans. Up to 1910, they recruited 20,000 Mexicans annually.
During the First World War, our countrymen played an important role in the economic development of the US, receiving in return from that government a wave of violence and persecution; war veterans physically attacked workers labeled as “aliens,” burned down their houses and stole their belongings. No one stopped them.
But neither the hunters nor the fences have halted the emigration toward the so called “first world country.” As an example, of those from Chiapas who migrate to the US, 79% never return. Our countrymen have advanced significantly in their type of work, from agricultural workers to construction, manufacturing and services.
In the city of Frontera Comalapa, a travel agency popularly known as “tijuaneras” [alluding to trips to Tijuana] has changed to focus its business on one purpose: every week, 40 buses leave from this area with at least 40 people from Chiapas headed for Tijuana, Baja California, with the intention to “cross the line.”
Immigration goes back much farther than 2006.
When considering how we will change/improve/etc immigration legislation, I think it's important to note that immigration is a part of US history. Trying to "get rid of them" didn't work in the the 19th century (or before), so why should we think that deportation would work now?
According to a New York Times article, published 11 January, federal immigration cases are overwhelming the justice system from federal to local courts.
Some of the below highlights of this article are based on a study recently concluded by a Syracuse University research group known as the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Quoted material follows:
- Federal prosecutions of immigration crimes nearly doubled in the last fiscal year, reaching more than 70,000 immigration cases in 2008.
- Immigration prosecutions have steeply risen over the last five years, while white-collar prosecutions have fallen by 18 percent, weapons prosecutions have dropped by 19 percent, organized crime prosecutions are down by 20 percent and public corruption prosecutions have dropped by 14 percent.
- United States attorneys on the Southwest border, who handle the bulk of immigration prosecutions, usually decline to prosecute drug suspects with 500 pounds of marijuana or less — about $500,000 to $800,000 worth. As a result of Washington’s decision to forgo many of those cases, Mr. Goddard said, local agencies are handling many of them and becoming overwhelmed.
On a light day, judges sentence between 40 and 60 criminals at a time. On heavy days, over 200 immigrants are handed sentences that vary from a few weeks to six months.
Reminds me of the Dark Knight when Two-face – before his accident – put 500 of Gotham’s criminals before a judge…
This article underscores one point more than any other. Eventually resources will dry up. We’ll never have enough judes, prosecutors, or ICE agents to capture, try, sentence, and the deport all the illegal aliens flowing in and out of the United States. And it’s quite clear that deportation is not a long term solution. Some of those deported are back inside the US in well under a week.
We can't police our way out of our problems with immigration.
Obama may have not wanted to touch the immigration lightening rod topic during the campaign, but one way or another it’s going to catch up to him.
Between 16 and 17 September, the Drug Enforcement Administration closed out Project Reckoning, a multi-layered operation focused on the activities of Mexican organized crime inside the United States and Europe. The 15 month investigation, focusing on the Gulf Cartel, culminated in the arrest of some 500 individuals in the US and Italy.
In addition, the DEA seized a large quantity of drugs and money. Their press release reads: “Project Reckoning has resulted in…the seizure of approximately $60.1 million in U.S. currency, 16,711 kilograms of cocaine, 1,039 pounds of methamphetamine, 19 pounds of heroin, 51,258 pounds of marijuana, 176 vehicles and 167 weapons.”
At a glance, this operation was a resounding success. The DEA’s mission has always been to focus on the big fish, the major players in drug trafficking, and by investigating the upper echelons of the Gulf Cartel’s operations in the United States, focusing on Atlanta, it had led a multi-agency effort to dismantle an important faction inside a major criminal network.
It is an impressive conclusion to a long investigation, and perhaps even a good start. But it is still only a drop in the bucket.
Not long ago, in early August, five Mexican nationals were found with their throats cut in an apartment complex in Birmingham, Alabama. Local police responded in force. But it is likely they were too late to catch the perpetrators, who were miles away, en route to Mexico before the first 911 call was even made.
This incident reminded us of the shoot out that occurred in Phoenix, Arizona on 22 June when organized criminal, dressed like Phoenix Police Department SWAT, entered the house of local drug traffickers and killed everyone inside before leaving the scene and fleeing back to Mexico.
Texan teens were recruited by members of Los Zetas to conduct assassinations in the Laredo area in 2006. The recruiters purposely targeted minors who were US citizens for the grisly work. For the duration of one year there were at least three cells of minor assassins operating across Texas.
These are just three examples of how the tentacles of Mexican organized crime have begun to stretch into and across the United States. Continuing demand for methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin and other drugs ensure a constant flow of drug supply north. And as Mexican organized crime consolidates control of all levels and layers of the drug trade in the United States, down to the wholesale level, the need to protect turf will extend north from the border into American cities as far north as Seattle and New York.
As the Merida Initiative indicates, the front line of the so-called drug war has moved north from Colombia to Mexico. But what Project Reckoning exemplifies is the fact that this front line will not stop at the US-Mexico border. It will continue north into American cities, towns, neighborhoods, and the suburbs of small cities like Birmingham, a place most people would consider safe and a fair distance from the blood bath constantly splayed across Mexican press.
For many years now, the argument against a supply-side approach to reducing the amount of drugs flowing into the United States has fallen on deaf ears, Republican and Democratic alike. And when the DEA most needs funding and support to dismantle large smuggling operations, the organization has seen significant budget constraints and a forced hiring freeze in 2007 and part of 2008, while the Department of Homeland Security, perhaps one of the best examples of bureaucratic failure in the past decade, has seen a constant budget boost.
The result is an increase in the number of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents organizing the deportation of immigrant criminals who are back within the week, often bringing others with them. There are many examples that suggest deportation feeds a cycle of violence between the US and Central America, with Mexico in the middle.
The encroaching presence of Mexican organized crime inside the United States is inexorably tied to immigration because both challenges have everything to do with the US-Mexican border. In as much as Mexico is unable to provide security incentives to stay home and contain its own organized crime problem, Americans will continue to watch as violence directly linked to the drug trade migrates from foreign press, to national news, to local reports.
The border cannot be plugged, and deportation is not an answer. The most direct route to improving this situation is by focusing on assisting the Mexican government with a security problem it clearly cannot handle. The Merida Initiative is a start, but when the total aid for three years, some US$1.5 billion, is compared with the annual earnings of Mexican organized crime, estimated between US$15 and 40 billion, one begins to see how much more help is required. It is best sourced from international partners, and if Mexico continues to suffer, the United States will continue to be the first in line to feel the effect.
Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM), the governmental organ responsible for investigation illegal immigration and enforcing Mexico’s immigration laws, is underfunded, poorly manned, and full of corrupt officials, according to the head of the INM, Cecilia Romero Castillo.
In a recent interview with Mexico’s Processo news magazine, Romero claims her organization simply cannot keep up with the growing number of illegal and documented migrants that enter Mexico on a yearly basis. Human trafficking, she claims, is a “juicy business” supported by INM officials that have been in place since November, 2006.
“…We are advancing a series of investigations…to identify a networks of traffickers. And when I speak of networks, I’m referring to an arrangement between foreigners and Mexicans, and within the group of Mexicans I have no doubt that some migration agents and officials with INM are involved,” Romero told Processo.
One group, called the Miami Mafia, specializes in trafficking Cubans into the United States through Mexico. According to reports from Mexico’s Attorney General’s office, this organization may earn as much as US$80 million a year. In other cases, human traffickers have charged as much as US$4,000 a person, to move them from Guatemala, through Mexico, and into specific points inside the United States.
The INM has some 4,600 employees between migration agents, investigators, and mid- to high-level officials. And for many years, the number of employees has not risen to keep pace with the growing number of people passing through Mexico’s various ports of entry via land, sea, and air.
“In 2000, the country had 23 airports and now there are close to 100,” Romero admitted, adding, “The most worrying is that INM now has less employees that it did in 2000.”
One in five or six illegal immigrants make it through and remain in the United States, Processo reports.
“In the state of Tamaulipas, which is a very complicated situation, there are only 240 employees, and they are not enough to cover 11 international bridges, five airports, two sea ports, apart from migration stations,” Romero said.
Tamaulipas has long been the stronghold of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, and a major trafficking point for any illegal product – human, drug, or otherwise – that flows into the US from Mexico.
Meanwhile, INM must document and receive all those Mexicans deported from the United States apart from preventing the passage of illegal immigrants through Mexico.
The organization’s Countryman Program oversees this process, and has two separate initiatives for children and minors who are deported from the United States, unaccompanied by adults.
Between January and May, 2008, some 300 thousand Mexican nationals were deported from the United States, nearly 2,000 a day, placing the 2008 tally at over a million.
When considering the complex situation of immigration inside the United States, and the current focus on deportation, the above facts should place a light on a larger reality: many of the people who are deported back to Mexico simply cannot be processed by the INM.
The trouble within Mexico’s INM is just one of the many reasons why a number of Mexican analysts consider the movement of people between Central America, Mexico and the United States to literally be like a human conveyor belt. Once deportees arrive, its likely they are shuffled through a haphazard layer of backed up paper work, resulting in a high probability of human error. And once repatriated, what’s to stop them from returning?
Until the INM receives better funding, reduces corruption, and increases the number of personnel required to cover the country’s various ports of entry, deportation as a tool for controlling illegal migration in Mexico or the United States is, at best, a mechanism that keeps the conveyor belt moving.
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