Just a few days after Mexican President Vicente Fox decried the
Minuteman Project as a group of vigilantes hunting down and killing illegal aliens crossing into the United States the U.S. State Department has found that Mexico consistently violates the rights of illegal immigrants crossing its southern border. Fox has also said he will
sue the Minuteman Project in international courts.
The Minuteman Project has not even begun their patrols along the Arizona-Mexico border and yet they have been declared a vigilante group by both President Fox and surprisingly President Bush.
Washington Times
Many of the illegals in Mexico, who emigrate from Central and South America, complain of "double dangers" of extortion by Mexican authorities and robbery and killings by organized gangs.
The State Department's Human Rights Practices report, released only last month, cites abuses at all levels of the Mexican government, and charges that Mexican police and immigration officials not only violate the rights of illegal immigrants, but traffic in illegal aliens.
Although Mexico demands that its citizens' rights be protected when they illegally enter the United States, immigrants who cross illegally into Mexico "are often ripped off six ways until sundown," says George Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary and a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
Mr. Grayson, who wrote a report for the center on Mexico's abuses of aliens, says "very little" is being done by Mexico to protect the welfare of the Central Americans and the others who cross into Mexico.
...
"We will use the law, international law and even U.S. law to make sure that these types of groups ... will not have any opportunity to progress," Mr. Fox said last week.
In response, Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, urged Mr. Fox to respect America's right to defend its borders and "demonstrate perhaps a little less disdain for the rule of law north of the border."
Mr. Kyl said Mr. Fox's "pre-emptive threats" to file lawsuits on behalf of those crossing the border unlawfully "is hardly helpful, since it presumes that illegal aliens have more of a right to break American law than American citizens have to peacefully assist authorities in enforcing it."
Tipped by: California Yankee
