Our “Friend” to the South
by William Norman Grigg
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The New American, December 16, 2002
Even as it seals off its own southern border, the Mexican government seeks the UN’s help in tearing down its border with the United States. |
On November 8th, Mexico’s representative on the UN Security Council joined the 15-0 vote to authorize using force against Iraq. Less than 24 hours earlier, the Mexican government asked the UN to intervene against the United States. This juxtaposition of events, unnoticed by the mainstream media, illustrates the deviousness of our supposed friend to the south — and the suicidal nature of the Bush administration’s efforts to empower the UN.
According to Mexico’s Notimex news service, the Mexican Senate filed a formal complaint with the UN Human Rights Commission accusing the U.S. of arbitrarily detaining individuals referred to as migrants from Mexico. “We know there were arbitrary detentions because [suspects] were denied the right to have access to legal counsel,” complained Sadot Sanchez, president of the Mexican Senate’s Human Rights Committee. Accusing the U.S. of violating the “human rights” of Mexicans under the pretext of fighting terrorism, Sanchez declared: “We cannot allow migration to be associated with delinquency.”
Mr. Sanchez — like most Mexican officials, many U.S. officials, and our mainstream media — dishonestly uses the neutral term “migrants” to refer to Mexicans violating our nation’s immigration laws. The correct term, of course, would be either “illegal immigrants” or “illegal aliens.” It is entirely proper and legal to detain and deport such people from our nation. The Mexican government understands this principle and implements it quite vigorously on its own southern border.
Beginning in July 2001, reported the August 13, 2001 Washington Times, Mexican authorities started “clamping down on the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans crossing Mexico’s southern border.” The Mexican police and military stepped up patrols along the 600-mile jungle-covered border with Guatemala and Belize, and threw up a similar barricade across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest part of Mexico. During the year 2000, Mexican officials deported 150,000 Central American immigrants.
According to Felipe de Jesus Preciado, head of the Mexican migration service, “the flow of Central American migrants north is a national security problem for Mexico. It wouldn’t be such a big problem if they were getting through to the U.S., but they get stuck and hang around in the frontier cities making trouble, sleeping in the streets with no money.” Of course, the flood of illegal aliens presents national security problems for the United States. But from Mexico’s perspective, they are entitled to seal their southern border, while America supposedly has a moral responsibility to absorb all the illegal aliens Mexico cares to sent northward.
Crime Haven
While Mexico is generally eager to send its nationals across our border, there are exceptions. Prosecutors and police officials from several border states have learned that Mexico is almost always unwilling to extradite people who committed crimes in the United States.
One such case involves Max LaMadrid, the accused murderer of teenager Tanee Natividad. About a year ago, LaMadrid allegedly shot the 16-year-old cheerleader from Nogales, Arizona, in the head. The illegal immigrant promptly fled to Mexico, where he hides in plain sight, socializing with his gang-banger buddies at local bars in the serene confidence that the Mexican government won’t extradite him.
An investigative report conducted by the CBS television affiliate in Nogales concluded: “If a Mexican citizen kills someone in Arizona, and makes it across the border, odds are, [he] will get away with murder.” The station’s news team learned of 100 cases over the past five years in which “murder suspects fled to Mexico and are still on the loose.”
This problem abounds in the U.S. southwest — an area targeted for “re-conquest” by Mexican irredentists. During a routine traffic stop last April, illegal Mexican immigrant Armando Garcia shot and killed Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff David March. Having been previously charged with two counts of attempted murder and twice deported, Garcia fled back to Mexico.
Joe Guzzardi, a columnist for the Lodi, California, News-Sentinel, reports: “Refusals from Mexico to extradite violent criminals are par for the course.... Los Angeles County officials estimate that from L.A. alone more than 60 suspected killers have fled to Mexico for sanctuary.” Nor is this simply a matter of the Mexican government sheltering its own citizens who have been in our country illegally. Alvaro Luna Jara, accused of brutally murdering a 12-year-old boy and attempting to murder three others, is not a Mexican national. However, notes Guzzardi, “Mexico refused to extradite him because his parents are [Mexican nationals].”
The Mexican “government” — which is actually the most powerful of that unfortunate country’s interlocking criminal syndicates — insists that it must protect Mexicans from the U.S. justice system, in which capital punishment remains an option. The Mexican government’s delicate sensitivity for the rights of the accused in such cases is atypical. Mexico, remember, is where officially sanctioned torture is a common interrogation tactic and extra-judicial “disappearances” of suspects are far from uncommon. Furthermore, Mexicans who commit crimes on our side of the border are subject to our laws, just as Americans who commit crimes in Mexico are subject to that nation’s laws.
Immigration Invasion
The November 7th complaint to the UN was not the first time the Mexican government asked the UN to intervene in our country on behalf of illegal Mexican immigrants. In 2000, Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights filed a complaint with the UN against officials and residents of Douglas, Arizona, a small border town literally under siege by illegal immigrants.
A Border Patrol clampdown on several popular border crossings resulted in illegal immigrants funneling through Douglas County “at a rate of hundreds of thousands a year,” reported the February 17, 2001 New York Times. “When my brother bought his ranch five years ago, it was pristine,” recalled Douglas resident Don Barnett. “You could ride a horse along a mountain crest, or pick up arrowheads. Now it’s a garbage pit. There’s plastic, tin cans, and [human waste] everywhere you look. Old blankets, cut hoses, cut fences. You name it, illegals’ll do it.” With the Border Patrol already stretched to the limit, some local ranchers formed posses to protect their property.
Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario Green announced in June 2000 that the Mexican government had hired a U.S. law firm to prepare a lawsuit against any ranchers who had detained illegal Mexican immigrants. (On several occasions, posse members had executed citizen’s arrests and detained the law-breakers pending the arrival of Border Patrol agents). “We, as the government of Mexico, can bring suit, with proof, against those who have violated the rights and dignity of Mexico,” declared Green. “We will take this as far as we have to.” In a few years this conceivably could mean seeking an indictment of American ranchers before the UN’s International Criminal Court.
Mexican immigrant smugglers, drug traffickers, gang-bangers, and petty criminals are invading our nation with the Mexican government’s active support. In recent years, Mexican army and police units have conducted border incursions and have even fired on agents of the U.S. Border Patrol. These constitute acts of aggression against our nation.
Addressing the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Albuquerque last August, President Bush declared: “Mexico is a friend of America. Mexico is our neighbor. And we want our neighbors to succeed. We want our neighbors to do well.... And that’s why it’s so important for us to tear down barriers and walls that might separate Mexico from the United States.” Why is President Bush, entrusted with defending our homeland, so eager to assist a hostile foreign power that is undermining our borders?
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