Immigrants Become Hostages as Gangs Prey on Mexicans

EL MIRAGE, Ariz. -- A whispered 911 call from a cellphone early one January morning brought police to a home on West Columbine Drive in this Phoenix suburb. Inside, they found more than 30 half-naked and shivering men -- prisoners, police say, of a gang that had smuggled them in from Mexico.

Beaten and threatened with a 9-mm Beretta pistol, a local detective's report said, the men were being shaken down for as much as $5,000 apiece, a ransom above the $1,000 that each had agreed to pay before being spirited across the border.

Such cases are increasingly common in Phoenix, which is gaining notoriety as the kidnapping capital of America. Authorities blame forces ranging from Mexico's rising drug violence to a gang takeover of the immigrant-smuggling business.

Another factor: the volatile housing market in the city, which has left it strewn with thousands of rental houses on sometimes sparsely populated suburban blocks, handy places for smugglers to store either drugs or people. The police call these "drop houses." They say federal, state and local authorities discovered 194 such houses in 2007, then 169 last year and dozens more so far in 2009.

While most of Phoenix's abduction cases relate to the drug trade, as dealers snatch rivals to demand ransom or settle debts, increasing numbers involve undocumented migrants. "Of 368 kidnap cases last year, 78 were drop-house cases involving illegal aliens," says Sgt. Tommy Thompson of the Phoenix Police Department. Officials say that in 68 alleged drop houses identified in the first five months of 2009, authorities found 1,069 illegal immigrants.

Todays M3Report from NAFBPO.

Mexican news source states 22,024 persons repatriated to Mexico within the first five months of 2009

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Foreign News Report

El Diario (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 6/10/09

Julieta Nunez Gonzalez, delegate of the National Migration Institute (“Inami’) said that eight out of every 10 persons, including children, who were repatriated this year by American immigration officials via Ciudad Juarez, were residing in the center or north of the United States and had already settled there. She pointed out that 2009 has been when the largest deportation of persons has taken place of persons who already had some time residing in the neighbor country, compared to those who were caught barely crossing the border. Those who were already settled and were returned to Mexico were employed as day workers, farm laborers, gardeners or construction workers, as well as plumbers, painters, mechanics, waiters and among them housewives stand out. Nevertheless, they were repatriated to Mexico together with those who had just barely arrived in the United States. From January to May of this year twenty-two thousand 24 persons were repatriated by the United States through Chihuahua, and especially, Ciudad Juarez. Of that number 18 thousand 85 had already made their lives in that country, while the rest, 3 thousand 939 had just crossed the border with the intention of going further into the neighbor country. According to “Inami” statistics, a fifth of the fellow countrymen are from Chihuahua, the rest from Durango, Guanajuato, Veracruz, Michoacán and to a lesser extent from just about all parts of the country.

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Milenio (Mexico City) 6/10/09

In Durango City, Durango, multiple shootouts yesterday between suspected drug traffickers and federal and state police officers left four civilians and two federal police dead. One of the civilians was a local lieutenant for drug cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Five others were wounded including soldiers and one other federal agent. Four narcos were arrested.

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El Financiero (Mexico City) 6/10/09

The office of Mexico’s Dept. of Justice in the state of Baja California reported that 70 persons were detained during the month of May for activities relating to drug traffic.

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El Universal (Mexico City) 6/10/09

The wake of violence caused by organized crime in the state of Guerrero this time caused the assassination of the chief of police of Chilpancingo (pop. near 200 thousand) He had been forcibly carried off last Saturday. Another eight persons were murdered in the state of Chihuahua, three of them in Ciudad Juarez despite the presence of thousands of military and federal forces. (But “Milenio” (Mexico City) had a late news item today reporting that two more Juarez policemen had fallen victim to volleys of assault rifle fire and had died.) In Durango, four men were executed around dawn yesterday; the killers wore dark uniforms and claimed to be federal agents. Later, on the Durango-Mexico highway, yet another man was killed on the outskirts of town and one other suffered wounds. Three persons were executed in Sinaloa; two of them were found in the trunk of a car. In Apatzingán, Michoacán, a murder victim had a big letter “Z” carved on his chest with a knife. And three other murder victims were found in the small state of Morelos, just south of the state of Mexico. Also in Morelos, nine police officers were arrested today because of their links to the Beltran-Leyva criminal enterprise.

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Tamaulipas en linea (Matamoros, Tamps.) 6/10/09

Since dawn today, Mex. army, navy & police forces have blockaded the city of Reynosa (across the Rio Grande from McAllen, TX, just upriver from Brownsville) by setting up a series of checkpoints preventing the exit and entry of vehicles. Officials are also conducting searches within the city, all reportedly in search of criminals.

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A recent survey by the state attorney general's staff of 170 former drop houses found that more than half had been mortgaged with no-money-down, interest-only financing, and 42% have gone into foreclosure. At the West Lumbee Street house raided twice in two months, the owners, Pablo and Ana Maria Sandoval, had moved to a larger home and were eager to find a tenant to help them pay the mortgage. They rented the house out for $1,200 a month.

"We had heard about these smugglers, but something like this had never happened to anyone we knew," says Mr. Sandoval, who repairs vending machines for a living. He says he has taken the house off the rental market and it's now occupied by a son who lost his own home to foreclosure.

Where's outrage from La Raza and LULAC at?

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