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Investigator in Mexican Migrant Massacre Missing

Posted August 28, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: International

The investigator looking into this week’s massacre of migrants in Mexico is missing. Reports have emerged that investigator Roberto Suarez was murdered by smugglers involved in the killing of 72 people seeking to immigrate to the United States. The Mexican government will only confirm that Suarez is missing at this time.

Most of the undocumented immigrants killed were from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Brazil.

The Wall Street Journal has a good background piece on the dangers encountered by those trying to come to the United State to work:

A survivor told authorities that he and his fellow U.S.-bound migrants were kidnapped and told they would either have to pay a ransom or work as drug couriers and hit men, according to the Reforma newspaper. Authorities suspect the Zetas drug gang was behind the massacre.

The killings have shocked the Mexican public, which has witnessed a string of atrocities by drug gangs, and sparked a national discussion about the country’s failure to protect foreign migrants, despite its quickness to criticize ill treatment of Mexican illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Eleven Mexican human-rights groups issued a joint statement Thursday condemning the executions, saying they were not “an isolated act. It is a clear sign of how violence is growing against migrants by Mexico’s state and individuals.”

Nearly all of the Central and South Americans in Mexico illegally are transiting the country in an effort to get to the U.S.—rather than looking to find jobs or settle down in Mexico. Mexican and U.S. authorities say it is difficult to gauge the number of people involved.

“Mexico—its government, its society—suffers from bipolar disorder on this issue,” Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa, a columnist for Reforma, wrote in Thursday’s paper. “We are wounded and scandalized by the conduct of U.S. institutions and some of its people against our citizens up north. ... But a similar or worse mistreatment happens here to Central and South Americans.”

More than a dozen Mexican rights groups in March presented a case against the Mexican government at the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States, arguing Mexico was systematically violating the rights of illegal migrants.

An estimated 20,000 migrants are kidnapped each year in Mexico, according to a study last year by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission. In as many as 200 cases, the abductions were carried out by local police or in collusion with police forces, the report said.

“In many cases, they are victims of federal and local authorities, especially those involved in public security, who brutally beat them, humiliate them, and extort them,” the report said, adding that Mexican courts showed little urgency in prosecuting such crimes.

There are signs Mexico is paying more attention to the problem. One U.S. official based in Mexico City said he has given countless workshops to Mexican federal agencies on how to protect migrants from criminal gangs. “There has been a marked change in Mexican government attitude towards this situation,” the official said.

The trip from Central America to the U.S. border is “one of the most dangerous in the world,” according to an April 2010 report from Amnesty International titled “Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico.”

Migrants walk through remote jungles, sleep outside, and ride atop dangerous trains to avoid immigration checkpoints. Local police, taxi drivers and government officials demand bribes to let them pass. They are targets of gangs, ranging from local thugs to sophisticated criminal organizations like the Zetas, a notoriously cruel drug gang initially formed by defectors from Mexico’s army.

It is rare for the crimes to be reported by migrants, who fear contact with Mexican authorities will get them deported. Rights groups say Mexico granted very few humanitarian visas last year to alleged victims of crimes so they could stay here and testify against alleged attackers.