Pubdate: Mon, 18 Jun 2001
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2001 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.sjmercury.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Mary Jordan And Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post

AT U.S. URGING, MEXICO TO TIGHTEN SOUTHERN BORDER TO FIGHT CRIME

MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican government plans to sharply increase the 
presence of soldiers, police, 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 
more tightly control its 750-mile border with Guatemala and Belize. 
While much attention has been placed on Mexico's northern border, 
officials say many of the problems there start with Mexico's 
notoriously corrupt and loosely enforced 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 through the south. When immigration or police officials 
do stop truckloads of people, or shipments of cocaine or arms, they 
frequently wave them through 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. 
Friday, the countries issued a statement outlining new joint rescue 
and training operations aimed at preventing more deaths of illegal 
immigrants crossing the border 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 illegally cross into Mexico via 
its southern border. Mexico last year deported more than 150,000 
foreigners, almost all of them trying to reach the United States, and 
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 
of those 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 one of its most narrow points, 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 for 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 here said the new 
system will not work unless Mexico can stop bribery of officials and 
robberies of immigrants.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe