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.
Much has already been published about Obama’s first “official” meeting with a world leader. Mexican President Felipe Calderon will meet with president-elect Barack Obama this morning at the Mexican Cultural Center in Washington DC. Calderon has an agenda heavy with a number of items that include immigration, security, and trade, yet he will receive very little by way of promise or action.
Mexico’s Proceso news magazine is quick to point out that Calderon supported McCain in the presidential campaign. But Obama will not hold that against him. Nevertheless, it will likely be at the back of both men’s minds, and if Obama wants to, he could use that simple fact to pressure Calderon, if only a little.
What Obama will make clear is that every request Calderon might make will have to go through the US Congress first – immigration reform, NAFTA tweaks, and support for the drug war top that list.
Obama has also played “the wall” cards close to his chest. The construction of the new border fence continues, and during the presidential campaign, neither Obama nor McCain made much of the issue. The truth is there was little daylight between each man’s position – use a wall near the cities and rely on a “virtual fence” in the long stretches between populated areas.
This will not be good enough for Calderon, but he must face the larger picture. Dozens of immigrants may still loiter around the Chevron station off of the 285 loop in Atlanta, looking for work as they do in every major city in the United States, but there are enough Mexican immigrants returning home to capture the national media’s attention. Once again, Congress comes into play, and the new Congress, once seated, will most certainly focus on the economy. The Mexicans, sadly, may have to wait it out through the summer and into the fall before we see any significant movement in Congress, and that’s with or without strong support from the Obama Whitehouse.
Calderon has done well to get his foot in the door first, ahead of a long line of world leaders eager to make a positive first impression on the new US president. To what avail? As optimistic as I’d like to be on this point, I must agree with the Proceso when it points out that little more that rhetoric will come of this meeting.
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.
With so much focus on the US-Mexico border, it is easy to forget about Mexico’s border with Guatemala. It is one that in the coming months and years will likely become a concern and a serious problem if Mexico is forced to fight a two-front war against organized crime.
Two problematic areas have been established.
One is in southern Guatemala where the Suchiate river largely defines the Guatemala-Mexico border. This is an illegal immigrant corridor through which hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans pass into the Mexican state of Chiapas.
And it is not just Latinos. On 3 April, six adult male Iraqis were apprehended after having crossed the Suchiate river on a raft holding falsified Dutch and Greek passports purchased in Guatemala. A total of 29 Iraquis were arrested in Chiapas in 2007.
Those who help Central Americans and other cross Mexico’s two borders are called “polleros” or sometimes “coyotes”. From 2000 to 2005, some 15,000 polleros were arrested in Mexico, and according to the Mexican National Migration Institute, 3,739 were prosecuted. The gap between arrests and prosecutions indicates a high level of complicity between polleros and the authorities tasked with stopping them.
A similar high number of arrests and low number of prosecutions continues through today, indicating the reports published concerning arrests of polleros or illegal migrants should be taken lightly as it is likely arresting officers will take a bribe. This system if catch and release then has served to enrich corrupt police officers more than it has to stop illegal border crossings into Mexico.
The other problematic area is in northern Guatemala in the department of Peten, where a largely lawless border area facilitates the ongoing construction of clandestine airstrips and the resulting movement of illicit cargo across the border into Mexico. It is an ideal smuggling route as there is relatively little government presence in the Peten and even less on the border.
Five principle border crossing routes have been identified by Guatemalan authorities: Pipiles, Santa Rosita, Bonanza, crossing into Chiapas, and El Repasto and El Sacrificio crossing into Campeche state. Near these border crossings in Guatemala are any number of landing strips, where men connected with Mexican trucking companies arrive at prescheduled times to pick up the cargo and transport to distribution centers further inside Mexico.
The Guatemalan government believes the Sinaloa Federation, the Gulf Cartel, and the Juarez Cartel all have agents working in the Peten region to move drugs into Mexico. These groups and others have worked in the Peten with near impunity for nearly a decade. So far, the Guatemalan government is powerless to stop them and help from the United States and Mexico is not on the horizon.
Together, both of these corridors represent the number one reason why Guatemala is a magnet for drug trafficking and illegal immigration. The combined result is more than the state of Chiapas, historically one of the most poor Mexican states, can handle.
With all eyes fixated to the north where President Calderón has focused the might of the Mexican military to combat organized crime, there is little help coming from the federal level to assist with what is clearly another major national problem in Mexico. It is one that has a clear spillover effect in the United States, the ultimate destination of both the drugs and humans that pass from Central America across Mexico’s other border to ultimately arrive on the northern shores of the Rio Grande.
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