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For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico

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Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce

Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce

Mexico, whose economic woes have pushed millions of people north, is increasingly becoming an immigrant destination. The country’s documented foreign-born population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, and officials now say the pace is accelerating as broad changes in the global economy create new dynamics of migration.

Rising wages in China and higher transportation costs have made Mexican manufacturing highly competitive again, with some projections suggesting it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market. Europe is sputtering, pushing workers away. And while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.

The new arrivals range in class from executives to laborers; Mexican officials said Friday that residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.

Guillaume Pace saw his native France wilting economically, so with his new degree in finance, he moved to Mexico City.

Lee Hwan-hee made the same move from South Korea for an internship, while Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily — pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.

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Mexico Captures Third Man Linked to Killing of U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry

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Border Patrol Agents Monitor US-Mexico BorderMexico has arrested a third man wanted over the 2010 murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent whose death drew attention to a botched operation to track guns smuggled to Mexico that embarrassed the U.S. government.

Mexican police in the northwestern state of Sinaloa said they had captured Ivan Soto Barraza, suspected of participating in the murder of U.S. agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout in the Arizona borderlands in December 2010.

The killing of Terry was linked to a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) sting operation dubbed “Fast and Furious,” which allowed weapons to slip across the border to Mexico.

Mexican Interpol agents working with federal and state police captured Soto, 30, near the town of El Fuerte late on Wednesday and took him to a prison in Hermosillo, Sonora, on Thursday where he awaits extradition, a police spokesman said.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation also took part in the operation to track down Soto, the spokesman added.

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Hezbollah Joining Cartels in Mexico’s War

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The Mexican Drug War has killed an estimated 60,000 people since 2006, but the violence has stayed out of the minds of most US citizens. That is about to change as Islamic extremist groups setting up shop in Mexico.

The House Committee on Homeland Security released a November 2012 report that reveals Islamic terror organizations and networks are indeed exploiting profits from narcotics, and the ease of weapons attainment, and the vast technological abilities of Mexican and other southern cartels that are thriving in Mexico’s lawlessness, along with other southern regions. The report, titled A Line In The Sand: Countering Crime, Violence, and Terror at the Southwest Border, details the growing involvement of Iran and Hezbollah in Mexico and other countries south of the southern US border.

In 2006, the Subcommittee reported on the presence of both Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America. Since then, that presence has continued to grow with Iran now having embassies in 11 Latin American countries that include Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua and Uruguay.

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Agents Shocked as Cartel Boss Involved in Torture Death of DEA Colleague Slips Away

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Photo Credit; Reuters

Photo Credit; Reuters

Mexican and U.S. authorities are scrambling to find a 60-year-old former drug lord — who was behind the brutal killing of an American agent nearly two decades ago — following his recent, and unexpected, release from a Mexican prison.

Rafael Caro Quintero walked out of Jalisco State prison shortly after midnight on Aug. 9 — a free man on a legal technicality, a decision which drew international condemnation and which the White House warns could lead to the release of other drug criminals in Mexico.

Security guards were assigned to follow Quintero after his release, but the former cartel boss was able to shake them after only 10 minutes, a source familiar with the events told FoxNews.com.

As both governments now try to figure out a way to re-apprehend and detain Quintero, outrage continues to build in the U.S., with current and former federal drug agents vowing to seek justice. The turn of events already threatens to deeply damage ties between the U.S. and Mexico. Attorney General Eric Holder has contacted his Mexican counterparts about the release, the Justice Department confirmed to FoxNews.com this week.

The case of Quintero, for U.S. agents, is personal. Quintero spent the last 28 years locked up for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of American DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. He was originally sentenced to spend 40 years behind bars.

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5 Bodies ID’d as Those of Kidnapped Mexican Youths

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Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

At least five of the bodies found this week in a shallow grave near Mexico City are those of teens who were kidnapped from a bar three months ago, Mexico’s attorney general said Friday.

The announcement appears to shed light on a crime that jolted the capital city: The kidnapping of 12 youths from an after-hours club during daylight on the morning of May 26.

Authorities on Thursday said they found a clandestine mass grave east of Mexico City. On Friday, the federal attorney general said the grave — a shallow grave covered by concrete at an eco park in a state neighboring Mexico City — contained 13 bodies.

Five of them were those of youths who’d been taken from the Mexico City club, the attorney general said.

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Obama Administration Considers Plan to Bolster Mexico’s Southern Border

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Obama administration and Mexican government officials recently discussed creating a three-tier security system designed to protect Mexico’s southern border from drug and human traffickers, according to U.S. officials.

The border control plan calls for U.S. funding and technical support of three security lines extending more than 100 miles north of Mexico’s border with Guatemala and Belize. The border security system would use sensors and intelligence-gathering to counter human trafficking and drug running from the region, a major source of illegal immigration into the United States.

According to the officials who discussed the U.S.-Mexican talks on condition of anonymity, the Mexican government proposed setting up three security cordons using electronic sensors and other security measures along the southern Mexican border, along a line some 20 miles from the southern border, and along a third security line about 140 miles from the southern Mexican territorial line.

The plan would be funded in part through the Merida Initiative, a U.S.-led anti-drug trafficking program that has involved nearly $2 billion in U.S. funds.

Border security was a major topic during the visit to Mexico last month by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Thomas Winkowski, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Alan Bersin.

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Feds Upset Over Release of Mexican Drug Lord who Ordered DEA Agent’s Killing (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsA Mexican court’s releasing of a drug lord who killed a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in the 1980s is sparking outrage this weekend among U.S. law enforcement officials.

Rafael Caro Quintero, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for ordering the 1985 killing of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, was released earlier this week by a Mexican court that overturned the conviction, saying he had been improperly tried in a federal court for state crimes.

The Justice Department said it found the court’s decision “deeply troubling.”

“The Department of Justice, and especially the Drug Enforcement Administration, is extremely disappointed with this result,” the agency said in a statement.

The Justice Department also said it “has continued to make clear to Mexican authorities the continued interest of the United States in securing Caro Quintero’s extradition so that he might face justice in the United States.”

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Mexican Cartels Hiring US Soldiers as Hit Men

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsMexican cartels are recruiting hit men from the U.S. military, offering big money to highly-trained soldiers to carry out contract killings and potentially share their skills with gangsters south of the border, according to law enforcement experts.

The involvement of three American soldiers in separate incidents, including a 2009 murder that led to last week’s life sentence for a former Army private, underscore a problem the U.S. military has fought hard to address.

“We have seen examples over the past few years where American servicemen are becoming involved in this type of activity,” said Fred Burton, vice president for STRATFOR Global Intelligence. “It is quite worrisome to have individuals with specialized military training and combat experience being associated with the cartels.”

The life sentence handed down in El Paso District court July 25 to an Army private hired by the Juarez Cartel to be the triggerman in a 2009 hit in this border city is the most recent case.

Michael Apodaca, 22, was a private first-class stationed at nearby Fort Bliss Army Base and was attached to the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade when he was recruited and paid $5,000 by the Juarez Cartel to shoot and kill Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana, a cartel member who had been outed as an informant for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Apodaca, who was the triggerman in the May 15, 2009, hit, was sentenced in El Paso District Court July 25.

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Oil Giant Halliburton Pleads Guilty to Destroying Crucial Evidence About the Deadly Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

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Photo Credit: EPAHalliburton Co has agreed to plead guilty to destroying computer test results related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.

The government said Halliburton’s guilty plea is the third by a company over the spill and requires the world’s second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum $200,000 statutory fine.

Halliburton also agreed to three years of probation and to continue cooperating with the criminal probe into the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

The company said in a statement Thursday night that it had agreed to plead guilty ‘to one misdemeanor violation associated with the deletion of records created after the Macondo well incident, to pay the statutory maximum fine of $200,000 and to accept a term of three years probation.’

The Justice Department has agreed it will not pursue further criminal prosecution of the company or its subsidiaries for any conduct arising from the 2010 spill, Halliburton’s statement said, adding that federal officials have also ‘acknowledged the company’s significant and valuable cooperation during the course of its investigation.’

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While We Consider Amnesty, Mexico’s Draconian Immigration Laws Have “Zero Tolerance”

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Photo Credit: National Review Until 2011, when it passed reforms, Mexico had among the most draconian immigration laws in the world. Guatemala has criticized Mexico for initiating construction of a fence along its southern border.

Mexico has zero tolerance for illegal immigrants who seek to work in Mexico, happen to break Mexican law, or go on public assistance — and zero tolerance for any citizens who aid them.

In Mexico, legal immigration is aimed at privileging new arrivals who have skill sets that will aid the Mexican economy and, according to the country’s immigration law, who have the “necessary funds for their sustenance” — while denying entry to those who are not healthy or would upset the “equilibrium of the national demographics.” Translated, this apparently means that Mexico tries to withhold legal residency from those who do not look like Mexicans or do not have the skills needed to make money.

If the United States were to treat Mexican nationals in the same way that Mexico treats Central American nationals, there would be humanitarian outrage.

In 2005, the Mexican government published a Guide for the Mexican Migrant — in comic-book form. The pictographic manual instructed the country’s own citizens on how best to cross illegally into, and stay within, the United States. Did Mexico assume that its departing citizens were both largely illiterate and unworried about violating the laws of a foreign country?

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