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KLMNO THE WORLD
For migrants, a dangerous trip through Mexico Robbery, rape and kidnappings are called common as criminal gangs prey on undocumented travelers
by William Booth in ixtepec, mexico
As the Mexican government condemns a new immigration law in Arizona as cruel and xenopho- bic, illegal migrants passing through Mexico are routinely robbed, raped and kidnapped by criminal gangs that often work alongside corrupt police, accord- ing to human rights advocates. Immigration experts and
Catholic priests who shelter the travelers say that Mexico’s strict laws to protect the rights of illegal migrants are often ignored and that undocumented migrants from Central America face a bru- tal passage through the country. They are stoned by angry villag- ers, who fear that the Central Americans will bring crime or dis- ease, and are fleeced by hustlers. Mexican police and authorities of- ten demand bribes. Mexico detained and deported more than 64,000 illegal migrants last year, according to the Nation- al Migration Institute. A few years ago, Mexico detained 200,000 un- documented migrants. The lower numbers are the result of tougher enforcement on the U.S. border, the global economic slowdown and, say some experts, the rob- bery and assaults migrants face in Mexico. The National Commission on
Human Rights, a government agency, estimates that 20,000 mi- grants are kidnapped each year in Mexico.
While held for ransom, increas-
ingly at the hands of Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, many mi- grants are tortured — threatened with execution, beaten with bats and submerged in buckets of wa- ter or excrement. “They put a plastic bag over your head and you can’t breathe. They tell you if you don’t give them the phone numbers” of fam- ily members the kidnappers can call to demand payment for a mi- grant’s release, “they say the next time we’ll just let you die,” said Jo- se Alirio Luna Moreno, a broad- shouldered young man from El Salvador, interviewed at a shelter in the southern state of Oaxaca. Luna said he was held for three
days this month in Veracruz by the Zeta drug trafficking organi- zation, which demanded $1,000 to set him free. He said he was ab- ducted by men in police uniforms and taken to a safe house with 26 others.
‘Epidemic’ in kidnappings
Of the 64,000 migrants de- tained and expelled by Mexico last year, the Mexican govern- ment granted only 20 humanitari- an visas, which would have al- lowed them to stay in Mexico while they testified and pressed charges against their assailants. “We have a government in
Mexico that emphatically criticiz- es the new immigration law — which is perfectly valid, to crit-
on
washingtonpost.com A treacherous journey
See photos of migrants traveling through Mexico.
washingtonpost.com/world Immigration poll
Ariz. law draws broad support.
washingtonpost.com/world
Migrants run to jump on a train. It is estimated that 20,000 migrants in Mexico are kidnapped annually.
icize a law with widespread con- sequences — but at the same time doesn’t have the desire to address the same problem within its own borders,” said Alberto Herrera, ex- ecutive director of Amnesty Inter- national in Mexico. “The violations in human rights that migrants from Central America face in Mexico are far worse than Mexicans receive in the United States,” said Jorge Bustamante of the University of Notre Dame and the College of the Border in Tijuana, who has re- ported on immigration in Mexico for the United Nations. U.N. officials describe the kid- napping of illegal migrants in Mexico as “epidemic” in scope. “We have definitely begun to see a greater degree of violence in the shipping of migrants north to the United States,” said Juan Car- los Calleros Alarcón, a director of policy at the National Migration Institute, which is responsible for detaining and deporting illegal visitors. He said local authorities appear
to be involved in the kidnappings. The migrants are preyed on by roving gangs that operate along the Guatemalan border. Once in Mexico, many migrants ride on dangerous freight trains to bypass immigration checkpoints. Local police, taxi drivers and city offi- cials often demand bribes or de- liver them to kidnappers, accord- ing to the migrants and research by government and human rights workers. Amnesty International says
that as many as six in 10 women experience sexual violence during the journey. Mexican government officials stress that only a handful of com- plaints are filed against federal immigration agents. The govern- ment has sped up the process of returning illegal migrants to their countries. Detention centers are newly built buildings; the mi- grants ride home in air-condi- tioned buses. At a meeting Wednesday, In- terior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont, the U.S. ambassador and
the governors of the southern Mexican states pledged to work harder to protect migrants.
Like ‘merchandise’
The small city of Ixtepec in the humid hills of Oaxaca is a cross- roads for illegal migrants moving north on trains. At the edge of town, along the tracks at a shelter for migrants run by the Catholic church, 100 migrants slept on cardboard in the shade, waiting for an afternoon meal, before they move on.
Sergio Alejandro Barillas Perez,
a Guatemalan at the shelter, said he was kidnapped in the gulf state of Veracruz this month and held for three days by men who said they worked for the Zetas. He said his kidnappers de- manded $10,000 for him and his girlfriend. “They told me if you don’t give us the phone numbers, we’ll kill your girlfriend,” said Ba- rillas, whose face was still bruised. “We were all in a house, a normal house. When they beat us, they would put a rag in our
DIGEST ISRAEL
Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest school ruling
Tens of thousands of black- clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged demonstrations Thursday in Je- rusalem and elsewhere to protest a Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls’ school. The protest drew attention to issues that Israel has grappled with for years, including dis- crimination in the Jewish com- munity and the disproportionate clout of the country’s ultra-Or- thodox minority. Parents of European, or Ashke- nazi, descent at a girls’ school in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel don’t want their daugh- ters to study with schoolgirls of Mideast and North African de- scent, known as Sephardim, ar- guing that they are not religious enough. Israel’s Supreme Court reject-
ed that argument and ordered the 43 sets of parents who have defied the integration efforts to
United States said it was seeking clarification from China on an agreement to build two new re- actors.
“I want to stress that the civil- ian nuclear cooperation between China and Pakistan is in line with each side’s international obliga- tions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. “It is for peaceful purposes and is un- der the supervision of the Inter- national Atomic Energy Agency.” State Department spokesman
P.J. Crowley told reporters Tues- day that Washington had asked China for more details on the deal.
—Reuters MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrate in Jerusalem against a Supreme Court ruling to force the integration of a religious girls’ school.
be jailed Thursday for two weeks. Police said that about 100,000 people converged in downtown Jerusalem in support of the Ash- kenazi parents. An additional 20,000 demonstrated in the cen- tral city of Bnei Brak. —Associated Press
CHINA
Nuclear deal with Pakistan is ‘peaceful’
China said Thursday that its nuclear dealings with Pakistan have a peaceful intent, after the
PAKISTAN
U.S. officials talk to bin Laden hunter
U.S. Embassy officials in Islam- abad met with an American con- struction worker who was de- tained in Pakistan this week while on a solo mission to kill Osama bin Laden. Gary Brooks Faulkner, 51, said
he set off for Pakistan after God appeared to him in a dream and ordered him to kill al-Qaeda’s leader to avenge the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Pakistani security officials said. Catching the al-Qaeda chief was Faulkner’s passion, his brother Scott Faulkner has said. He sold all of his tools to finance his trip and was prepared to die in Pakistan, his brother said. Faulkner has not been charged
with any crime in Pakistan. —Associated Press
Afghanistan says minerals are worth $3 trillion: Afghanistan’s untapped minerals are worth at least $3 trillion — triple a U.S. es- timate, said the government’s top mining official, Wahidullah Shahrani. Geologists have known for decades that Afghanistan has vast deposits of iron, copper, co- balt, gold and other prized min- erals, and a Pentagon briefing this week put a price tag of nearly $1 trillion on the reserves.
Toll from French floods rises to 25: The death toll from flash
floods in the hills above the French Riviera rose to 25 as new thunderstorms threatened the region. The rescue operation ended, and attention was turning to cleaning up and restoring power, officials said Thursday.
5 Somalis convicted on piracy charges: A Dutch court convict- ed five Somalis of piracy and sen- tenced them to five years in pris- on for trying to hijack a ship from the Dutch Antilles last year, in the first such case to go to trial in Europe. Intertanko, the associa- tion whose members own most of the world’s tanker fleet, said the ruling could “turn out to be a landmark case.”
Colombian mine blast kills at least 16: A coal mine explosion in northwestern Colombia thought to have been caused by a buildup of methane gas killed at least 16 miners and left dozens trapped. The explosion Wednes- day night collapsed part of a mile-long access tunnel, officials said.
—From news services
Pacific Ocean
0 MILES 400
Sunni fighters targeted in attacks
by Leila Fadel and Aziz Alwan
baghdad — A Sunni fighter who had turned on al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed at his home out- side Fallujah early Thursday in the latest of a string of attacks tar- geting members of a U.S.-backed Sunni militia group. Mudhar Hamad al-Essawi, 42, his wife, their three young sons and his brother were killed as they slept, said Shaker al-Essawi, the mayor of the suburb where the attack occurred. At least 47 members of the
PHOTOS BY LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Salvadoran migrants rest at a shelter as they wait in Lecheria, north of Mexico City, for a train that can take them to the U.S. border. Juarez U.S. MEXICO
Mexico City
Gulf of Mexico
OAXACA Ixtepec THE WASHINGTON POST
mouths and they turned on the music, loud, like they’re having a party.” He said the kidnappers
knocked out his girlfriend’s teeth and dragged her away. He and others escaped. He said he does not know what happened to his girlfriend. “These migrants aren’t people
— they are merchandise to the mafias, who traffic drugs, weap- ons, sex and migrants,” said Ale- jandro Solalinde, the Catholic priest who runs the Brothers of the Road shelter in Ixtepec. “They suck everything out of them.” The priest said that federal au- thorities do not protect the mi- grants and that local officials also look the other way, or take their cut from the robbers and traffick- ers.
Solalinde has battled local au- thorities who want to shut down his shelter, which feeds as many as 66,000 passing migrants in a year. More than 100 were at the shelter last week. The priest said many Mexicans are distrustful of the outsiders. In 2008, townspeople became en- raged when a Nicaraguan man who was living in Ixtepec was ac- cused of raping a young girl. As police and the mayor were out- side the gates at the shelter, Sola- linde said, 100 angry protesters got inside. “They had stones and sticks and gasoline,” the priest said. “They wanted to burn us down.”
boothb@washpost.com
Researcher Michael E. Miller in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Awakening, or Sahwa, also known as the Sons of Iraq, and their fami- ly members have been killed across the country in the past 45 days, according to a Washington Post count. Many, like Mudhar Essawi, were former insurgents who had turned against the Sunni extrem- ist group al-Qaeda in Iraq. Most were being paid a salary by the U.S. military. At one point, more than 100,000 men were on the U.S. payroll before the Iraqi gov- ernment took over and promised to absorb most of them into the security forces or the civil service. As the U.S. military draws down, Awakening groups worry that the government will fail to protect them and that attacks by al-Qaeda in Iraq will increase. “All Sahwa members are think- ing of leaving the city or taking ex- tra security procedures to protect themselves,” the mayor said. The U.S. military said in a state-
ment Thursday that its data show that fewer members of the Sons of Iraq have been killed in 2010 than during the same period in 2009, despite claims to the contrary by the militia’s leaders. It said that the Iraqi government is commit- ted to members of the Sons of Iraq and continues to pay them. In Anbar province alone, at least 21 men and their relatives have been killed since May 1, said Capt. Mohammed Abdullah of the Anbar provincial police. The Sunni fighters also say they are angry that al-Qaeda in Iraq is using the judicial system against them. Relatives of al-Qaeda fight- ers killed by Awakening members are going to the courts, leaders said, adding that the Awakening men are denied immunity for kill- ings they carried out against the extremist group. “Al-Qaeda is attacking us, not just by the weapon, but also by is- suing arrest warrants against us,” said Abu Kutaiba al-Shimmeri, an Awakening leader in Anbar. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has suffered major blows since elections March 7. Its top two leaders have been killed and several other lead- ers detained. But the group showed its continuing strength Sunday, the day before Iraq’s new parliament convened, in a coordi- nated attack on Iraq’s Central Bank that killed at least 25 people. On Thursday, the Islamic State
of Iraq, an al-Qaeda in Iraq front, asserted responsibility for the at- tack.
fadell@washpost.com
Special correspondent Uthman Mukhtar in Fallujah contributed to this report.
FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010
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