Pubdate: Mon, 18 Jun 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Authors: Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post Foreign Service

MEXICO PLANS A TIGHTER GRIP ON ITS BORDER TO THE SOUTH

Security Effort Targets Flow Of Drugs, Migrants to U.S.

MEXICO CITY, June 17 -- The Mexican government plans to sharply increase 
the presence of soldiers, police officers, naval patrols and immigration 
checkpoints near its porous southern border. The plan, which has not yet 
been made public, is an unprecedented effort to choke off flows of illegal 
immigrants, drugs and guns entering the country from Central America.

Most of the illicit human and drug traffic coming into Mexico is heading to 
the United States, and Washington has long urged Mexico to control its 
750-mile border with Guatemala and Belize more tightly. While much 
attention has been placed on Mexico's northern border, officials say many 
of the problems there start with the notoriously corrupt and loosely 
enforced protection of the southern border.

Hundreds of thousands of undocumented people, many from Guatemala and El 
Salvador but increasingly from as far away as China and Iraq, enter Mexico 
from the south. When immigration or police officials stop truckloads of 
these people, or shipments of cocaine or arms, they frequently wave them 
through in exchange for a cash bribe.

Interior Minister Santiago Creel said in an interview that getting Mexico's 
southern flank under control was critical to President Vicente Fox's 
promise to crack down on corruption, and to Mexico's commitment to 
Washington to reduce the flow of U.S.-bound illegal immigrants.

"We have never had the security we want in the south; things were very 
loose," said Creel, who is in charge of the South Plan, or Southern Zone 
Plan. "This is part of our big challenge to modernize and find new ways of 
doing things in Mexico."

"We are very encouraged to hear this," said Johnny N. Williams, western 
regional director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. 
"Mexico is used as a transit point" for illegal traffic into the United 
States, he said, and what happens on Mexico's southern border is of 
"extreme importance to both countries."

Williams said there has been a "revolutionary" change in the way Mexico and 
the United States work together on immigration issues. On Friday, the 
countries issued a statement outlining new joint rescue and training 
operations aimed at preventing more deaths of illegal immigrants crossing 
into the Arizona desert. During the hot summer months, the United States 
will put more helicopters and personnel in the region and Mexico has added 
rescue workers on its side of the border.

Creel said that in return for Mexican efforts to reduce illegal 
immigration, the United States should help with immigration issues 
important to Mexico. He said he hoped negotiations with Washington would 
produce results on increasing guest worker programs and "regularizing" the 
legal status of Mexican workers already in the United States. "The U.S. has 
to present results, as well as Mexico," he said.

No one knows exactly how many people cross into Mexico illegally via its 
southern border. Mexico last year deported more than 150,000 foreigners, 
almost all of them trying to reach the United States; most of them had 
entered across the southern border. Officials estimate that for every 
illegal immigrant caught, three to five more evade authorities.

U.S. officials last year caught 28,000 non-Mexicans who illegally entered 
the country across the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 22,000 were from 
Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and most of them are believed to have 
arrived in Mexico through its southern border.

Creel said $10 million has been allocated for the National Immigration 
Institute, and much of that new money will go to modernizing 13 tumbledown 
southern border checkpoints. Four or five new ones also will be built. 
Construction is to start next month.

Perhaps the most innovative feature of the plan, whose final details have 
not yet been worked out, is the focus of elite groups of soldiers and 
police along a critical highway. The Trans-Isthmus Highway crosses Mexico 
at a narrow point, connecting the Gulf of Mexico in the north to the 
Pacific Ocean 150 miles to the south. It runs from the town of 
Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz state to the town of Salina Cruz in Oaxaca state.

All land traffic from the southern border to the rest of Mexico must cross 
this relatively short highway. Creel said that guarding this key choke 
point would be easier than trying to patrol the entire border. And to catch 
those who try to beat the new system by going by sea, the plan calls for 
naval ships to sharply increase their patrols in southern waters.

Creel said concentrating manpower in the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec 
would be less expensive and more efficient than the traditional system of 
haphazard checks and patrols. "In the past the policy wasn't effective at 
all. . . . There was no plan. Now we are working with clear objectives," 
Creel said.

Another critical element of the new plan is attacking official corruption 
and human rights violations. Officials said the new system will not work 
unless Mexico can stop bribery of officials and robberies of immigrants.

The immigration service has a new, reform-minded director and many other 
officials have been fired, from top management to those who work at remote 
border stations.

Creel said the government was conducting undercover sting operations to 
detect official corruption. He said that while there has been noticeable 
improvement in the effectiveness of immigration operations in the northern 
states, "in the south we have not seen even the start of results."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D