Deaths mounting on Mexico’s border security watch
A multimillion-dollar border security program launched in June has realized measurable results, but critics say it has failed to prevent more than 100 deaths since its inception as rival drug cartels fight for dominance along the country’s northern border.
Mexican President Vicente Fox initiated the Mexico Seguro or Safe Mexico program June 11 to address public safety concerns along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Since January, more than 800 have been killed in drug-related violence on the Mexican side of the border with almost daily killings and no arrests reported in Nuevo Laredo.
Although Matamoros and Reynosa have seen a slight upswing in drug-related disturbances, figures show the two cities have been spared the worst, with fewer than 30 drug-related killings since January.
To address the problem, Mexico Seguro combines the efforts of several federal agencies and the Mexican military with the goal of fighting gang violence and bringing order to the nation’s troubled outposts.
“The fight against organized crime is one for the short-, medium- and long-term future,” Fox spokesman Rubén Aguilar Valenzuela told reporters at a July 29 news conference. “We will not waiver in it.”
One week later, Aguilar told reporters that the program has produced results though not as productive as the Mexican c had hoped.
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PHOENIX, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- The governor of Arizona and her counterpart in Sonora, Mexico, plan to coordinate efforts to fight drug trafficking and illegal immigration on the border.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has been voicing frustration with federal officials in helping with U.S.-Mexico border issues, the Arizona Republic reported Friday. She and Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours said they were setting up plans to combat "coyotes" who smuggle people across the border and the smugglers who take drugs across.
Napolitano said she was ordering 12 Department of Public Safety officers to an auto-theft task force. Stolen cars are often used in border
Bill Richardson touches off a firestorm in Mexico
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's August 12 declaration of a state of emergency along the Mexican border with his state provoked sharp reactions in Mexico. Almost immediately, national Mexican newspapers posted stories about the declaration on their front pages, while the federal Ministry of Foreign Relations (SRE) and Interior Ministry issued a joint statement deploring the move. Leonel Cota, the national president of the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution, called on Mexico's federal government to not be pressured and reject the emergency declaration.
Gov. Richardson issued the declaration after touring southern New Mexico
Mexican troops joined police and civil defense workers in the rescue effort in Aguililla, roughly 410 kilometers (245 miles) southwest of Mexico City.
Local news media reported at least one person had died. Mary Cortez of the Michoacan state civil defense agency said no confirmed deaths had been reported to the state headquarters, but she said people were missing and 200 houses were damaged.
About 10,000 people live in the town of Aguililla, the county seat of an area that has strong family ties, due to emigration, to Redwood City, California.
The flooding came a day after President Vicente Fox toured parts of
The government has assigned bodyguards to at least seven federal judges and magistrates after death threats were made against them in recent weeks, an official who oversees the federal judiciary said Wednesday.
Some analysts said the announcement, which comes after high-profile killings of police officers and prison workers, shows that Mexican drug gangs are launching an all-out assault on the government and civil servants, as they did in Colombia.
Elvia Diaz de Leon, head of the Federal Judicial Council, said the judges under threat are overseeing cases involving drug gangs.
"Today we have seven or eight cases of threats against circuit judges and
US says migrant deaths at record on Mexico border
Deaths of illegal immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border soared to an all-time high in the past year, as a brutal heatwave killed hundreds in the remote Arizona desert, the U.S. agency in charge of border security said on Monday.
The U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection said at least 464 immigrants died crossing the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border during the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, a rise of 43 percent on the previous year and the highest number since records began.
Spokesman Mario Villarreal, speaking in a phone call from Washington, said well
Mexico criticizes U.S. immigration bill focusing mostly on border security
The Mexican government Friday slammed the U.S. Congress for approving the construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, while Mexican human rights groups said it will only cause more deaths.
The U.S. House of Representatives late Thursday approved building 700 miles of fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, giving priority for construction in Laredo, Texas. The city is across the border from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where warring drug cartels have been blamed for more than 140 killings this year.
The measure is part of a wider immigration enforcement bill that
Record deaths on US-Mexico border
A record number of illegal migrants have died while trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, say US customs officers.
At least 464 had died in the past year to 30 September, they said. The figure is a 43% increase on the previous year.
High temperatures in June and July caused many deaths, but others were due to car accidents or drowning.
A more accurate reporting procedure in the Arizona area was another factor in the rise.
According to the Reuters news agency, border patrols also conducted a record number of 2,570
Mexico pushing for probe in deaths of 2 immigrants
Their ire stoked by plans in Washington for tougher border enforcement, Mexican officials and politicians are pressing for investigations of the deaths of two young men while they were crossing illegally into the United States.
The men's deaths, one near San Diego last week and the other at Laredo in mid-December, are being blamed on the U.S. Border Patrol.
President Vicente Fox's government sent a diplomatic note this week to the Bush administration calling for an investigation into the Dec. 30 shooting death of Guillermo Martinez, 18, on the border near San Diego.
And
U.S. flights to Mexico fail to cut migrant deaths
A U.S. government program that returns illegal immigrants to Mexico by flying them deep into the country is ineffective at reducing the number of deaths in the Arizona desert, analysts said on Wednesday.
The Interior Repatriation Program of daily charter flights from Tucson to Mexico City and Guadalajara was implemented in 2004 to cut deaths in the summer months.
Instead of dropping the migrants near the border as is usually done, the program flies them hundreds of miles inside Mexico. The idea was to deter migrants from immediately reattempting to cross the border via
Mexico, US governors pledge to strengthen co-op in border security
Governors of border states between Mexico and the United States reached agreements on further cooperation in border security and migrants on Friday, pledging toask their federal governments to declare the 3,200-km border a "strategic zone" for security.
The governors made the remarks at a joint statement signed after concluding a two-day conference in Mexico's Torreon, 807 km northwest of Mexico City.
They agreed that the establishment of a strategic zone between the two countries would bring more federal funds to the border region
