[frontera-list] Mexican advocates say U.S. officials don't care about tales of violence--US Catholic

[molly]

http://uscatholic.org/news/2010/04/mexican-advocates-say-us-officials-dont-care-about-tales-violence
Mexican advocates say U.S. officials don't care about tales of
violence
Thursday, April 29, 2010
By Catholic News S...
By David Agren Catholic News Service

EL PASO, Texas (CNS) -- An unidentified Mexican man and his wife,
fearful to reveal their true identities, spoke recently to a group of
reporters and immigration advocates in this border city about the
violence that forced them to seek refuge in the United States.

The husband tearfully described how carloads of thugs arrived at their
home in neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, burst onto their property,
murdered four family members and shot at another two children in the
neighborhood.

The family subsequently fled across the border to El Paso.

"All I want is security for my family," the man said.

The family's long-term safety is anything but assured, however,
because of the complexities of the U.S. immigration system and,
advocates say, an unfavorable bias toward asylum seekers from Mexico,
whose requests are granted at a rate of only 2 percent.

"There is no legal recourse for us to stay here," said the man, whose
family has not requested asylum. "Legally speaking, I'm practically in
hiding."

Such stories have become common in El Paso, where the local police
department estimates 30,000 Ciudad Juarez residents have abandoned the
city of 1.3 million inhabitants and have settled directly across the
Rio Grande.

In Ciudad Juarez, stories of extortion and kidnapping are common, and
a turf war between narcotics-trafficking cartels and gangs affiliated
with the cartels has claimed an estimated 750 lives this year. Many of
the city's residents simply cross the border by brandishing
identification cards that range from U.S. passports to 10-year visas
to temporary crossing permits.

Advocates in El Paso said U.S. border and immigration officials are
not interested in the stories of violence, threats and extortion told
by asylum seekers.

"We are now aware that Mexican nationals, fleeing the violence in
Mexico, crossing into the United States and seeking and needing
protection are finding that the door has been closed," said Ruben
Garcia, director of Annunciation House, a Catholic organization in El
Paso that has supported asylum seekers for 32 years.

"To petition for political asylum implies being detained, denied and
running the risk of being sent back to the same violence from which
they fled," he said.

The arrival of asylum seekers is nothing new in El Paso, which Garcia
says has long been a gateway to the United States for those fleeing
violence further to the south in places such as Central America and
Colombia.

The nature of those asylum seekers changed in early 2008, when
violence erupted in Ciudad Juarez and the Mexican military and federal
police were sent to the border region -- part of a crackdown on the
cartels that has claimed nearly 23,000 lives since President Felipe
Calderon took office in December 2006.

Since then, asylum advocates in El Paso say they've been swamped with
requests from Mexican nationals.

"I have received 432 calls requesting consultations for asylum since
January. Every day I get four or five calls," said Sergio Saenz, a
paralegal and intake specialist with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy
Center in El Paso.

"People come to my office saying their sister or brother has been
killed, mothers crying, grandmothers crying, children crying because
they lost a dad," he said.

Numbers from the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration
Review that were provided by Annunciation House say that 12,100 asylum
requests from Mexico have been submitted since the cartel crackdown
began in 2006. Only 232 of those requests have been granted. In
comparison, Colombian nationals submitted nearly 5,900 claims over
that same period -- 40 percent of which were granted.

"You see the process and you see the antagonism and you see the
hindrance from the moment they're received to the moment they're
detained to the moment they're taken to the camp," said Carlos
Spector, an El Paso immigration attorney who works with Mexicans.

Spector associated the hostile treatment and low approval rate of
asylum claims to U.S. support for the cartel crackdown in Mexico,
which has been supported with technical support, law enforcement
consulting and military equipment provisions through an initiative
known as Plan Merida.

"To admit that there's persecution and that the government of Mexico
is unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens is to admit that
the war on drugs and the millions of (U.S.) taxpayers' dollars that
we're funneling to Mexico are going into a hole and we're losing that
war and we're having no impact," he said.

"It's a recognition once the courts start granting asylum to Mexicans
that in fact there is corruption ... there is violence and there is no
end to it."

Messages left with the Dallas office of the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship
and Immigration Services were not returned.

The couple fleeing Ciudad Juarez, who spoke with heads covered during
a recent news conference in El Paso, said there would be no protection
from the violence if they returned home.

"We don't want to return to Juarez. We were traumatized. My family
suffered terribly: 20 years of work and savings were lost in 10
seconds," the man said. "I want to tell the U.S. government that there
are Mexicans who need their help."

Copyright © 2010 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops

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