MEXICO CITY — With the U.S. Congress debating whether to send hundreds
of millions of dollars in aid for Mexico's crackdown on drug cartels,
American officials said Wednesday that three Mexican police chiefs
have sought asylum north of the border in fear for their lives.
Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner for Customs and Border
Enforcement, told the Associated Press that the officials had sought
asylum "in the past few months."
Citing privacy issues, Ahern did not identify the police. A senior
Homeland Security official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
confirmed the asylum requests to the Houston Chronicle but provided no
details. "They're basically abandoned by their police officers or
police departments in many cases," Ahern said in Wa****ngton.
The police chief in Puerto Palomas, a town bordering Columbus, N.M.,
west of El Paso, requested asylum in March when his entire force quit
after receiving death threats from drug traffickers, re****ts show.
Seven men were killed gangland-style in Palomas early Sunday in
attacks attributed to local smugglers.
Officials at the Mexican Embassy in Wa****ngton had no knowledge of
other asylum requests, spokesman Ricardo Alday said.
"That doesn't mean it hasn't happened. We just don't know about it
yet," he said.
Mexico's drug war violence has escalated sharply since President
Felipe Calderon ordered nearly 30,000 federal police and troops into
the field against drug traffickers 17 months ago. Most of the federal
forces are operating in states along the border and down the Pacific
coast.
The Bush administration has petitioned Congress for a $1.4 billion,
three-year package to send anti-narcotics aid to Mexico and Central
America. All but $50 million of the package is earmarked for the
Calderon government.
The House Foreign Relations Committee recommended funding the plan
Wednesday. Mexican and international human rights groups have
expressed concern about the aid package, citing past human rights
abuses by the police and soldiers.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in Mexico since Calderon's
crackdown began, according to media tallies. The settling of scores
between rival gangs accounted for most deaths.
But the pursuit of the drug-trafficking gangs and their enforcers also
has had fatal consequences for Mexican law enforcement, including some
of its most senior lawmen.
The police chief of Ciudad Juarez was killed last weekend, cut down in
a volley of some 60 bullets as he arrived home unescorted in the early
morning. Gunmen killed a senior Federal Preventative Police official
at his Mexico City home last Thursday, wounding two of his four
bodyguards in the process.
Edgar Millan, 42, the Preventative Police commander, was a close aide
to Mexico's public security minister, who led the civilian front of
the government's drug war.
Millan was killed shortly after federal agents narrowly missed
capturing reputed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva in the resort city
of Cuernavaca, about 50 miles south of Mexico City, the Mexico City
newspaper El Universal re****ted Wednesday.
Beltran escaped amid a sustained firefight between his bodyguards and
federal police. Millan directed the police operation, El Universal
said.
Among the nine alleged bodyguards arrested after the gunfight were
several men who had recently defected from the Mexican army.
Investigators arrested five men, including an employee of the police
agency where Millan worked, in his murder. Federal police say Beltran
ordered Millan's death.
With Mexican officials vowing no letup in the campaign, violence
against security forces persists.
Three Mexican state policemen were gunned down in an ambush this week
near the West Texas border. Another two officers were killed, and six
kidnapped, in the southwestern state of Guerrero. And a large
contingent of gunmen re****tedly attacked a police outpost in the
highlands of Sinaloa state, on the country's Pacific coast.
The Sinaloan mountains are known for their marijuana and opium
plantations and are the birthplace of some of Mexico's more notorious
gangsters, including Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
Some of the policemen have been killed because their heightened
enforcement started affecting the drug trade, analysts say. But
Mexican officials acknowledged that some police, especially on local
and state forces, may be targeted because they provided protection to
one cartel or the other.
"These are difficult moments for Mexico," Interior Minister Juan
Camilo Mouriño said in Sinaloa. "The Mexican state is being challenged
by those who in a cowardly manner corrupt, threaten, poison and
execute.
"The challenge is to all of us."
Correspondent Marion Lloyd in Mexico City and re****ter Stewart Powell
in Wa****ngton contributed.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5781179.html
|
