Mexico Under Siege

MEXICO'S DRUG WAR CREATES NEW CLASS OF REFUGEES

Business Owners, Law Enforcement Officers, Journalists and Other
Professionals Are Among Those Seeking Asylum in the U.S. -- Even When
It Means Sitting in Jail.

The Juarez police lieutenant was recovering from three gunshot wounds,
the result of an assault by hit men for a drug cartel. His name was on
a death list brazenly posted at a monument for fallen peace officers.
Lt. Salvador Hernandez Arvizu didn't like his odds of surviving in
Mexico. So he fled his hospital bed, hoping to take refuge in the U.S.

At a border post in El Paso, he filled out immigration paperwork, made
a formal request for political asylum -- and was taken directly to
jail.

The Juarez policeman is part of a new breed of would-be refugees --
business owners, law enforcement officers, journalists and other
professionals -- on the run from Mexico's vicious drug wars.
Increasingly, they are seeking safe haven in the U.S. by filing for
asylum.

The number of asylum requests filed at U.S. border entries by Mexican
nationals nearly doubled to almost 200 in the last fiscal year, and
the pace has increased this year. Seventy Mexican asylum-seekers filed
petitions in the first quarter, most of them in El Paso and San Diego.
The figures are small compared with the vast scale of illegal
immigration, but many fear explosive growth if the bloodshed worsens.

Drug violence in Mexico has claimed at least 7,000 lives in little
more than a year, most of them along the border and many carried out
to maximize their gruesome effect. Mass killings and beheadings have
had a terrorizing effect on border towns from Texas to Tijuana.

It is unclear whether any asylum requests have been granted in cases
based on fear of drug violence. Most of the recent cases are still
working their way through the system. Some refugees from the
narco-wars are hiding on the U.S. side of the border, uncertain
whether to apply for asylum -- and risk being deported if their
petitions are denied.

"We're at the beginning of the problem," said Bruce J. Einhorn, a
retired immigration judge. "It's indicative of a new and emerging
class of persecuted people from Mexico."

The surge in applications has heightened debate about how broadly to
interpret asylum rules and whether to detain applicants while they
wait for their cases to be decided.

Asylum-seekers are among the most desperate people confronting
immigration officials. Deporting them to their homeland can be a death
sentence. But under U.S. law, fear of criminal violence is not
recognized as grounds for asylum.

Applicants must show that they are members of a social, political or
other group targeted for persecution -- a difficult standard to meet.
Asylum requests are usually associated with people fleeing civil wars
or dictatorships.

Mexican applicants generally do not claim to be victims of government
persecution. Rather, many argue that Mexican authorities have failed
to protect them from the drug cartels -- a hard-to-prove variation on
the established criteria for asylum.

The applicants are not immigrants in search of economic opportunities.
They are typically middle-class, employed and frightened.

"It's very hard to accept that I can never return to Mexico, but that
is the lamentable reality," said Emilio Gutierrez Soto, a regional
newspaper reporter for El Diario in northern Chihuahua state who has
an asylum request pending.

Gutierrez said his troubles began with a series of articles he wrote
that criticized the Mexican military, which is leading the country's
anti-drug efforts. After a death threat, Gutierrez said, he headed for
the border with his 15-year-old son. He left behind a home and career.

Like the wounded police lieutenant, the Mexican journalist was jailed
immediately in El Paso by U.S. authorities. All asylum-seekers
arriving at border posts face detention. Gutierrez's son was sent to a
juvenile detention facility but later was released to relatives.

The case has prompted advocates for immigrant rights to approach the
Obama administration with renewed appeals to allow such asylum-seekers
to remain free while they await rulings on their applications.
Journalism groups also rallied to his defense, and Gutierrez was
released unexpectedly in January after seven months in custody.

"I was prepared to stay in jail as long as it took, since I know I'm a
dead man in Mexico," Gutierrez said in an interview. He and his son
have been reunited and are living with family members in the U.S.

Juarez police Lt. Hernandez, however, abandoned his asylum bid and
returned to Mexico, according to El Paso lawyer Carlos Spector, who
represented him.

"People, especially policemen, just get tired of being in jail,"
Spector said.

Hernandez could not be reached for comment. His former lawyer thinks
he is in hiding in Mexico.

The increase in applications has prompted heightened federal scrutiny
of asylum petitions.

"The agency has been paying closer attention to the issue of Mexico's
drug-related violence," said Jedidah Hussey, deputy chief of the
asylum division for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Einhorn predicts that asylum requests have yet to peak. The retired
immigration judge, now a law professor at Pepperdine University, said
the boom in applications "will probably get more intense and busy
before it lessens."

He also said he expected evidence of drug-related violence against
Mexican citizens eventually to be persuasive to officers and judges.

"A credible argument can be made that these individuals are unable to
obtain protection from . . . the government of their country," Einhorn
said. That could make them arguably eligible for asylum, he said.

Some experts caution against expanding the grounds for asylum to
accommodate those fleeing the drug violence.

"Clearly, if we start granting asylum to Mexicans, it could start a
real flood of applicants, even from people with no plausible case,"
said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration
Studies in Washington, which seeks tighter enforcement of immigration
laws.

Already, Mexico's drug havoc has generated warnings of a looming
humanitarian crisis.

In December, retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, former U.S. drug
czar, raised the prospect of "millions of refugees" if Mexico failed
to curb lawlessness. The previous month, the U.S. military's Joint
Forces Command cited the potential threat to U.S. security of a
debilitated Mexican state. Some suggested the U.S. might need to build
detention camps and post troops to contain a potential flood of refugees.

However, a State Department official said such scenarios were
overblown.

"What is happening is people along the border who have visas, who are
middle-class, who are scared of the violence -- you may see a larger
number of those folks going to live on the U.S. side," said the
official, who under State Department guidelines could not be named.
"This is a subset that is different from economic migrants coming into
the U.S."

Among the recent asylum petitioners is a Juarez mother of four whose
husband, a drug operative, was gunned down gangland-style along with
two other relatives. Her lawyer argued that she and her children were
uninvolved in drugs yet remained potential targets of retribution
killings, and were entitled to protection.

"We're sending these people back to their deaths," said the lawyer,
Craig Shagin, who declined to identify his client to protect her and
her family.

Last month, an immigration judge ordered the widow deported. In
denying her asylum claim, the judge ruled that Mexico's violence was
widespread and didn't specifically target her. She also had the option
of relocating her family within Mexico, ruled Judge Andrew Arthur in
York, Pa.

The woman is appealing the ruling. In the meantime, she is being held
in a Pennsylvania immigration lockup, along with her two youngest
children, ages 9 and 14.

In El Paso, officials say they are keeping an eye on self-declared
drug war refugees -- for their protection.

"The El Paso Police Department knows who has taken asylum over here,"
said Mayor John Cook. "We don't publicize this or make a big deal of
it, but we know who might become targets."

Among the Juarez professionals who have fled is Jorge Luis Aguirre, a
veteran journalist who founded the widely read website
lapolaka.com.

The site's amalgam of news tidbits and pointed musings is a must-read
for Juarez politicos, business leaders and journalists. Last year,
several postings questioned the drug-fighting resolve of Patricia
Gonzalez, Juarez's top prosecutor.

According to Aguirre, threats filtered back to him, but he became
especially alarmed after fellow reporter Armando Rodriguez of El
Diario de Juarez was gunned down in November. Aguirre said that while
he was en route to his fellow reporter's wake, his cellphone rang.

"You're next," the caller said.

Aguirre, his wife and his three children packed their bags and entered
the U.S. on temporary visas. Today, Aguirre publishes his site from
hiding in El Paso.

He is mulling a bid for asylum once his temporary visa expires, but
Aguirre worries that he could end up jailed, or worse, deported -- a
fate that he is sure would mean death.

"I was happy in Mexico; I never intended to leave, until they vowed to
kill me," Aguirre said in an interview at an El Paso cafe. "When they
tell you that in Juarez, you better believe it."