Mexican facing deportation claims to be DEA spy

By Tom Ramstack
AHN (All Headline News)
August 30, 2011 02:39 pm EDT

A Mexican man who claims to be a former spy for the Drug Enforcement Administration is seeking asylum in the United States as he faces deportation to Mexico, where he says he will certainly be murdered by drug cartels.

Jose Alberto Moreno Ramos says he informed on the drug cartels in Arizona but was turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation when he criticized the DEA for not paying him. He also accuses the agency of corruption.

Moreno Ramos is facing deportation at a time when the crackdown on drug smuggling is taking on more of a bi-national character along the Mexican border.

Mexican police recently started staging raids based in the United States with assistance from U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Moreno, who is being held in a deportation center in El Paso, TX, says he has information about U.S. and Mexican law enforcement operations that would make both sides uncomfortable if it was revealed publicly.

He has been asking for assistance from the news media in El Paso.

“I know many things of interest about how the governments of the United States and Mexico work,” he said in a letter published by the El Diario of El Paso newspaper. “The most likely is that they will assassinate me, but I want to say a lot of things.”

He says he worked under contract for the DEA in Nogales, AZ, where he would cross the border into Mexico to infiltrate drug gangs.

“Notwithstanding that, and the fact they haven’t paid me, they have me here locked up,” Moreno said. “People need to know a lot of things so they will not fall into the traps of the government and the mafia, which are the same thing.”

Moreno says he has been incarcerated at the deportation center for 26 months. He said he had his last court date three months ago but still is awaiting a judgment in his effort to avoid being deported.

An Immigration and Naturalization Service report says Moreno has a history of arrests and confinements stretching back to 1998, when he was arrested for drunk driving. He also has been deported previously, according to police.

Moreno so far has given few details of the secrets he might know about drug interdiction efforts along the border.

However, some U.S. officials have been dropping hints about recent clandestine operations authorized by the Obama administration.

They allow Mexican commandos to hide in designated areas in the United States and to send helicopters back across the border after drug smugglers.

The DEA provides logistical support and information that helps guide Mexican tactics.

The operations help Mexican commandos evade surveillance by drug gangs that closely watch police movements along the border, according to U.S. officials. They also help to avoid corrupting influences that might negate any police crackdowns in Mexico.

The joint law enforcement efforts were made possible through agreements between Mexican President Felipe Calderon and President Barack Obama.

Calderon started calling for more assistance from the United States shortly after he ordered in troops in December 2006 to help police shut down drug cartels. Only after meetings with Obama in the past year has he said he is getting the cooperation he sought.

Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns clarified the U.S. role in the partnership with Mexico during a trip he made to Mexico this month.

“Our role is not to conduct operations,” Burns said. “It is not to engage in law enforcement activities. That is the role of the Mexican authorities. And that’s the way it should be.”

More than 35,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s war against drug cartels in the past five years.

The latest mass killing in the war occurred last week, when arsonists set fire to a casino in Monterrey. Fifty-two people were killed.

The five men arrested Monday were associated with the Zetas drug cartel, according to Rodrigo Medina, governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. The men confessed to setting the fire because the casino owner refused to pay them protection money.

Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90058630?Mexican%20facing%20deportation%20claims%20to%20be%20DEA%20spy#ixzz1WYu08xk3

For one man, Mexico is too dangerous

Judge rules government south of border can't protect him.
By Jason Buch
August 14, 2011

The subject of this story is a marked man.

Members of Mexican drug cartels have threatened him, kidnapped him, beaten him and shot at him. Identifying him by name could get him killed.

They want to kill this man because he worked with the government to combat the cartels. His efforts as a private government contractor resulted in large drug seizures and significant financial losses to the criminal organizations.

“They were calling me to threaten me that they were going to kill me,” he said during an interview this summer in San Antonio. “If I kept doing my job, I was going to get killed.”

His story isn't too different from what tens of thousands of Mexicans face as a matter of course in a country that saw more than 15,000 drug war fatalities last year, and where everyday citizens and legitimate business owners are targeted by indiscriminate drug traffickers.

It's also not too different from the experience of thousands of Mexicans who come to the U.S. every year seeking refuge from the narcos.

But there’s one big difference between this story and theirs: In May, an immigration judge ruled that the man — who requested anonymity because of the risks to his safety — could stay in the U.S. because of the perils that could befall him in his native country.

The decision by Immigration Judge Margaret D. Burkhart found it’s too dangerous for the man to return to Mexico, allowing him to live and work in the U.S. until it’s safe for him to go back.

Burkhart ruled that as a private citizen who worked with the government to combat the cartels, the contractor fits in a class that’s protected by U.S. immigration law.

She also ruled the cartels have so corrupted Mexican law enforcement that the government there couldn’t protect him.

The contractor is so well-known in his profession that printing his occupation might identify him. In fact, it’s that recognition, the court ruled, that made returning to Mexico so dangerous for him.

“Due to his notoriety, the threats he received and the attempts made upon his life even after he had relocated to Mexico, (the contractor) fears torture and even death if forced to return to Mexico,” Burkhart wrote in her decision.

“He believes his life is in danger no matter where he goes in his country,” she continued. “Even if he entered another profession, he believes he would be targeted by the cartels because his name is so well-known in Mexico. His fear is further magnified because it does appear that the authorities also are involved with those persons seeking to do harm to” him.

Threats start

The contractor said he knew the power of the cartels. A colleague in northern Mexico had been tortured and killed for helping the government. But back then, in the mid-2000s, the drug-war violence largely was confined to Mexican states bordering the U.S. He thought he was safe living in central Mexico.

In 2006, he started receiving threatening phone calls but didn’t think much of them. That fall, the contractor said, he was stopped at a red light when two men with guns approached his car.

At gunpoint, they warned him to stop his business. Terrified, he and his partner began canceling contracts with Mexican government agencies.

But by December of that year, his partner noticed a black SUV with Texas plates in front of their business. And one day, the SUV followed him.

“They were about to pass me and I saw them with a weapon so I just turned the wheel against them and they went into the curb and they crashed into a tree,” he said.

It wasn’t until he got home that he saw the bullet hole in his windshield.

That was enough for him. He packed up, moved to a smaller town, stopped working with the Mexican government and lived a solitary lifestyle.

When a year had passed, thinking he was safe, he went into business with the Mexican federal highway police. That proved to be a near-fatal mistake.

In May 2008, he was pulled over by a federal police officer. Instead of asking for his license, he said, the officer ordered him out and handcuffed him. A van stopped in front of the cop’s car and the officer handed him over to the men in the van.

“As long as you cooperate with them, you won’t have problems,” the officer said. The men in the van hit him with a rifle butt when he looked at them and ordered him to look away. They threatened him with death and torture.

“I was sure that they were going to kill me this time,” he said. “This time I couldn’t do anything. I was already with them, in their hands.”

Crying, he begged for mercy. The narcos laughed in his face and insulted him.

“They said, ‘We need you to work for us,’” the contractor said. “And I realized, ‘OK, they were just playing with my mind.’ They didn’t want me dead, they wanted my job. So then I realized they were not going to kill me as long as I worked with them.”

The contractor asked for two months to meet the traffickers’ demands. They gave him one. He accepted, but instead of going to work, he began plotting his escape to the U.S.

“Obviously, I didn’t think about working for them or anything like that,” he said. “Because working for them, first of all, it is not right what they are doing. And second, you’re going to get killed anyway.”

Days later, he had a tail again, this time a black Ford Crown Victoria favored by Mexican police. Again, he made a series of odd turns to see if he was being followed. He was. Again, he fled.

The Crown Victoria chased him, pulling alongside his vehicle as they crashed over speed bumps.

“They were going to pass me and that’s when I turned the wheel,” he said. “It worked last time, so I did the same. ... This time, I saw the weapon, but they didn’t shoot this time. So then I run.”

He didn’t go home. He had an employee bring him his belongings.

“So from there I didn’t go back to my house,” he said. “I just took the highway coming to U.S.A.”

Letting him stay

The contractor was allowed to stay in the country under a provision of immigration law called withholding of removal. Like asylum, in order to receive withholding of removal, the man had to prove he risked persecution because of his race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

The judge ruled that as a government contractor working against the cartels, the man was being persecuted as a member of a social group.

Last year, immigration judges ruled on 83 withholding requests made by Mexican citizens, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates immigration courts. Of those, just 17 were granted.

Unlike asylum, which would have given him a green card, withholding only allows the contractor to live and work in the country until the situation in Mexico improves enough for him to return.

Withholding also has a higher threshold than asylum. He had to prove there was a probability of harm if he returned to Mexico, rather than just a credible fear of harm. Immigration courts have balked at awarding either to those fleeing the drug war in Mexico. And because immigration court files are closed, the ruling can’t be used by other attorneys.

“Withholding is very difficult to get granted ... especially for Mexican natives,” said San Antonio immigration attorney Juan Gonzalez, who represents the subject of this report. “Because Mexico’s not considered a country that is unstable or is working against its people.”

The intrusion of the cartels into everyday life is driving more asylum-seekers to the U.S., San Antonio immigration attorney Lance Curtright said.

“Definitely, there’s been an uptick in the number of people who are afraid to return to Mexico based on the drug violence,” Curtright said. “Now some of these people have had family members that have been extorted. A lot of times a common story you’ll hear is to operate a business you need to pay protection, need to pay a fee. A lot of times they have guys walk into their storefronts and demand money.”

In 2007, the year after Mexican President Felipe Calderón increased the use of the military in combating drug traffickers, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services saw the number of asylum requests from Mexican nationals jump from 1,302 in 2006 to 2,073.

In 2009, the number fell to 1,393, but last year 2,320 Mexicans came to the U.S. asking for asylum, and the total already has exceeded 2,812 in 2011. Those numbers don’t include people who seek asylum through immigration courts after going into deportation proceedings.

Asylum-seekers from Mexico generally have to claim membership in a social group that’s being persecuted. But it’s hard for a business owner who doesn’t want to pay the cuota, the protection fee charged by criminal organizations, to get asylum in the U.S., Curtright said.

It’s widely known that elements of the Mexican government are in collusion with the cartels, but asylum-seekers, he said, find it difficult to prove that the “state is unable or unwilling to protect the asylum-seeker.”

And engaging in a business that’s targeted by cartels doesn’t necessarily make someone a member of a social group, he said. Journalists and human rights activists have had some success winning asylum in the U.S., but police officers, for example, have a tougher time because some judges believe they take on risks when they put on the uniform.

“It’s going to be tough to win some of these cases,” Curtright said. “And some of them are going to depend on who the adjudicator is.”

Last year, USCIS granted only 115 asylum cases to Mexican nationals.

The government contractor, the subject of this report, wasn’t eligible for asylum because he’d already been deported.

Fighting deportation

The contractor lived in the U.S. for two years, trying to fly under the radar by operating his own business and not seeking employment. He drove to Laredo to renew his tourist visa every six months, but in May 2010 he ran into trouble.

An immigration officer who thought he seemed nervous and noticed he had a U.S. cellphone canceled the contractor’s visa and ordered him removed from the country. He spent the night on the border and the next day hired a coyote, or human smuggler.

“When you hire the smugglers, that was when the scary things started,” the contractor said. “Because they are gangsters and they are doing drugs or they are drunk. They have weapons. They have new vehicles, but of course they are stolen and they run like crazy in Mexico and even here in the U.S.A. And they are talking about you like you are cattle and you are just a thing, you’re not a human being.”

He was shuffled from stash house to stash house, crammed with other immigrants into the back of a truck and led for days walking in the brush, only to be caught by local police and turned over to the Border Patrol. Facing deportation again, he decided to stay in the U.S. and fight removal.

The contractor ended up spending 364 days in custody before the judge ruled May 25 to grant him withholding.

His fight isn’t over yet. The government has appealed the ruling. And while he’s lucky to have family in the U.S. to support him, recovering from years on the run and in detention hasn’t been easy.

“At the beginning, when I was released, I was so happy I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “When I was inside, all I was thinking was to get out, to get regular food, to sleep in a bed, to have a regular shower, a regular restroom. ... That was all I wanted. But then you get out and it’s not like that, it’s not as easy as that.”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/For-one-man-Mexico-is-too-dangerous-1978887.php#ixzz1V0iKCvGn

Detainees in New Mexico beg to be deported through safe territory

“Please Save Us”

By Andrew Beale
Alibi.Com; V.20 No.27 | July 7 - 13, 2011

This Week's News/Opinion

The Tijuana / San Diego border

Almost 50 people held on immigration charges in New Mexico signed letters saying that if they are deported over the state's border, they will be immediately kidnapped or killed.

One missive, written in June in broken English, was sent to David Hill of the nonprofit No More Deaths by 21 detainees held at the facility in Torrance County, N.M. “Please save us,” they wrote. They pled to be deported through the Arizona or California border instead.

They said that if sent through either New Mexico or Texas, they will be kidnapped by a drug gang known as Los Zetas and will almost certainly die.

The letter-writers knew each other only from being in the detention center together, according to No More Deaths. One of the men had been kidnapped after a previous deportation, and he shared the story with others in the facility.

The detainees’ letter also says the municipal police in Mexico kidnap deportees and turn them over to gangs that hold them for ransom. “They take you to an abandon alley or house and waiting for you is this group Los Zetas at gunpoint your eyes are bandaged and your feet and hands are tied, and so begins the nightmare!”

“It's not entirely clear to us when, in fact, and how they're going to be deported and what their immigration status actually is.”

Peter Simonson, executive director of ACLU-NM

No More Deaths started a letter-writing campaign on behalf of the detainees, and about 7,000 letters were sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “The participation has been more than double anything we’ve done before with this campaign,” says Hill, a volunteer who works in Nogales, Ariz.

Other activist groups were relieved that dangerous deportations were being spotlighted, Hill says. Several national nonprofits, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have become involved in the case.

Peter Simonson, executive director of ACLU-NM, says he has been in contact with the detainees and sent an email to the directors of the Torrance County Detention Facility. But, he adds, there is no appeal process possible through the U.S. justice system. He says the ACLU is considering the possibility of appealing to an international body, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—a course of action that ACLU-NM has never pursued before. Any decision rendered by such an organization would not be legally enforceable, he says. “Basically, the hammer behind it would be political pressure.”

“The humanitarian consequences ... are enormous, as is evidenced by the case of these detainees that are terrified for their lives.”

Lena Graber, a policy associate with the National Immigration Forum

Simonson says he's unsure of the locations of some of the detainees. “It's not entirely clear to us when, in fact, and how they're going to be deported and what their immigration status actually is.”

No More Deaths released a statement on its website on Thursday, June 23, indicating that seven have already been deported. A volunteer with the organization, Hannah Hafter, says other letter-writers are being held indefinitely at a facility in El Paso. Since they perceive a threat to their lives, they may be able to apply for asylum. Still, many are frantic about the indefinite detention, she says, and wish they could be returned to Mexico to continue supporting their families.

Representatives of ICE declined to comment for this story but issued a response to the call for safer deportations. ICE recommends the detainees contact the Mexican Consulate with safety concerns. The response notes “ICE recognizes the current situation relating to violence in Mexico,” but the agency does not allow people to choose the location they will be deported to.

The statement goes on to say that as of March 3, ICE has not been deporting “criminal aliens”—that is, immigrants facing criminal charges unrelated to immigration status—through Ciudad Juárez.

Hafter says the response letter from ICE is upsetting. “It’s basically both acknowledging that they know that this is happening to people and saying that they don’t do anything about it, and it’s not their responsibility.”

Furthermore, reaching out to the Mexican Consulate or other government agencies for help could be dangerous. Simonson says the detainees told him in conversation that Mexican immigration services have been known to collaborate with drug cartels. He says the detainees told the ACLU that “the receiving immigration office is actually conspiring with the drug cartel to hand people over to the drug cartel so they can be held for ransom.”

ICE generally sends deportees to a different location from where they were apprehended, according to Lena Graber, a policy associate with the National Immigration Forum.

“They believe that it's part of a fair strategy of deterrence to re-entry,” she says. “The humanitarian consequences for that are enormous, as is evidenced by the case of these detainees that are terrified for their lives.”

Hill of No More Deaths says getting people deported through Arizona or California would be a great help to the people who sent the letters, but more drastic policy reform is needed on the border.

“The things that people are experiencing immediately on deportation are happening all over the border—kidnappings, extortion, beatings, ” he says. “Obviously, we would like to see fundamental immigration reform.”

http://alibi.com/news/37758/article.html

Temen por su vida si son deportados vía Juárez

By Alberto Ponce de León
El Diario de El Paso
15-06-2011

Un grupo de 21 personas –la mayoría oriundas de Sinaloa y que en la actualidad se encuentran detenidas por ser indocumentadas en Torrance, Nuevo Mexico– teme por su vida si se les deporta por Juárez y el resto de las fronteras de los estados de Chihuahua, Coahuila y Tamaulipas.

“Por favor, sálvenos. Nosotros, como internos, quienes nos encontramos en el Centro de Detención del Condado de Torrance, tememos por nuestras vidas”, escribieron en la primera línea los indocumentados mexicanos en una carta enviada al grupo humanitario “No más muertes”.

Hannah Hafter, vocera del organismo, con base en Arizona, dijo que el organismo ha iniciado una campaña a fin de frenar la deportación de los mexicanos a través de las fronteras de Texas y Nuevo Mexico, ante el temor de caer en manos de cárteles del narcotráfico.

“Tenemos testimonios de personas que dicen que eso les pasó”, afirmó vía telefónica. “Recibimos cartas firmadas por personas que pidieron nuestro apoyo. Nos dijeron que querían salir por Sonora y no por Texas o Nuevo Mexico. Son cuatro cartas, pero están firmadas por todos”.

Afirmó que la mayor parte de los indocumentados es originaria de Sinaloa y que al ser deportados por Ciudad Juárez, por ejemplo, su vida correría peligro, en vista de las disputas territoriales que en la actualidad libran cárteles del narcotráfico.

“Es que alguien que está en la cárcel con ellos les dijo que la última vez que fue deportado, fue secuestrado, y que mataron a otro que también iba, que porque su familia le había enviado dinero”, mencionó. “Nadie es de Juárez; son más de la costa oeste, pero creen que por los enfrentamientos que hay, van a ser atacados, porque son por ejemplo de Sinaloa”.

Viene de la 1A

Los indocumentados que firmaron las cartas, aseguró, dicen que miembros del Grupo Beta, pertenecientes a Instituto Nacional de Migración de México, filtran su base de datos a algunos policías de los municipios fronterizos con el fin de cometer los crímenes, entre ellos secuestros.

“Es una acción urgente. Tenemos una lista de correos y de e-mails”, agregó. “Organizaciones nacionales están compartiendo esta acción urgente. Hemos enviado mil 500 faxes y más de 500 llamadas al ICE”.

Explicó que los detenidos han pedido ser deportados por las fronteras de Agua Prieta o Naco, Sonora. En ocho meses, dijo, nadie ha sido repatriado por estos dos puertos de entrada a pesar de que representan un menor riego para los inmigrantes.

El miedo de los indocumentados es justificado, dijo, debido a que los inmigrantes frecuentemente son blanco de extorsión, violencia, raptos y amenazas de muerte en esta región.

La organización ha dicho que las 21 personas fueron detenidas luego de cruzar el desierto de Arizona sin documentos migratorios de Estados Unidos.
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Como parte de la campaña, ‘No más muertes’, se está pidiendo a la comunidad contactar a la oficina de la secretaria de Seguridad Nacional, Janet Napolitano y a la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) para frenar las deportaciones a través de la frontera de Texas y Nuevo México.

De acuerdo con los datos del grupo “No más muertes”, el gobierno estadounidense repatria a México un promedio de mil indocumentados por día, lo que ha provocado una situación única de explotación de inmigrantes, de la cual se “alimentan” las redes del narcotráfico.

La fecha de deportación programada para los 21 detenidos es entre el 15 y 17 de junio.

http://www.diario.com.mx/notas.php?f=2011/06/15&id=658c813c335d08980527ee728d2e0ba3