Mexico Under Siege

DESPERATE POLICE TRY FOR U.S. ASYLUM

Julio Ledezma had been chief of police in La Junta, a town of 8,700
in northern Mexico, for barely three months when a pair of strangers
paid him a visit.

They said an aide to the mayor had sent them, and they bore gifts: a
briefcase stuffed with cash and a truck for Ledezma's personal use.

In return, the new chief was to distract federal police at security
checkpoints with fake calls for assistance. The diversion would allow
drug traffickers to drive through the area without inspection.

Ledezma could refuse -- and be killed.

He could take the bribe -- and be owned by the Juarez cartel.

He chose to stall. He told the men he had to talk to his boss first.
He approached civic leaders, trying to rally support. Word got back
to the traffickers, and on Ledezma's 45th birthday, six men with
military rifles surrounded his home while he was out buying steaks
and jalapenos for his birthday dinner.

The gunmen told his wife that they would find him and kill him, no
matter where he went in Mexico. They waited about 20 minutes, then left.

When Ledezma returned, he realized that resistance was not an option.
He drove to Juarez with his wife and their 15-year-old daughter and
crossed the Bridge of the Americas into El Paso. There, they asked
for political asylum.

Their request will probably be rejected, because asylum is reserved
for people fleeing political oppression or ethnic discrimination.
Police officers who stood up to drug cartels don't necessarily qualify.

Indeed, the U.S. government is aggressively fighting Ledezma's
petition on the grounds that the threat that caused him to flee is
inherent to police work, according to his lawyer, Eduardo Beckett.
U.S. immigration officials said they could not comment because asylum
cases are confidential.

As drug violence has worsened in Mexico, businesspeople, journalists
and other professionals have been seeking refuge in the U.S. But few
have as much at stake as law enforcement figures who defy the cartels.

No statistics are available on how many police officers have sought
asylum in this country, but government sources and immigration
attorneys suggest the number is increasing.

That is no surprise, because Mexican police have been "left out in
the cold by the very institution they sought to protect," said Bruce
J. Einhorn, a retired immigration judge in Los Angeles who directs an
asylum clinic at Pepperdine University School of Law.

Police officers seeking refuge in this country face an uncertain
future. If their asylum applications are rejected, they can be
deported to Mexico, to face near-certain retaliation from the
cartels. To avoid such a fate, they can try to strike a deal with
U.S. authorities to provide information about drug trafficking in
Mexico. Or they can try to remain in this country illegally.

Their plight poses a quandary for U.S. officials, who are seeking to
bolster honest Mexican police to curb the influence of the cartels.

"These cases are problematic," said Kathleen Walker, an El Paso
lawyer and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.
"It's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole."

In recent months, judges have granted refuge to a few Mexicans
fleeing drug-related violence, according to immigration lawyers. But
none were police officers.

George Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William
and Mary in Virginia and an expert on U.S.-Mexico relations, said
that if immigration judges began to grant asylum liberally to people
fleeing the cartels, "We'd have literally tens of thousands of police
officers coming to the United States, not to mention some mayors, too."

Cartels' Long Reach

In some cases, disillusioned or terrified officers simply head for a
border post and ask for asylum. They are held in detention facilities
while waiting for their applications to be reviewed by asylum
officers and a federal immigration court, a process that can take
years. More often, Mexican police enter the country on visitor visas;
they then have up to a year to apply for asylum. Such applicants
typically remain free while awaiting a ruling.

Through immigration lawyers, interviews were arranged with Ledezma
and two other Mexican police officers now in this country. Their
accounts provide a glimpse of the drug cartels' reach and brazenness.

One of the officers, a detective in Baja California, received a call
seeking inside information about two jailed murder suspects linked to
the cartels.

The 39-year-old detective, interviewed on condition that he would be
identified only as Alvarez, said he suspected that a fellow officer
had set him up for the bribery attempt.

Alvarez said he had been brash enough to ask how some of his
colleagues could afford fancy clothes, new cars and expensive weapons
on their $1,000-a-month salaries.

The anonymous caller wanted to know about interrogations of the two
suspects. Alvarez had had the men moved from a jail cell to police
headquarters so he could question them about a pair of killings he
was investigating.

"He said, 'You transferred some of my guys who work for me. And I
want you to let me know every time you go to see them,' " Alvarez recalled.

No money was offered, but Alvarez knew how the traffickers worked.
They paid $3,000 upfront, he said, and $2,000 more each time a cop
tipped them to a raid or gave other information.

"I told him, 'You should call someone else. I'm not that kind of
person,' " Alvarez said. "He said, 'You're not going to listen to me?
You're not going to do it?' "

Two weeks later, Alvarez got another call. It was his daughter,
reporting that armed men had been seen outside their home. Alvarez
asked a supervisor for protection. The supervisor shrugged and said
there was nothing he could do.

Alvarez fled with his family, entering the U.S. at San Ysidro on
visitor visas. He is living in Southern California, working at a supermarket.

He said Mexican police need more support and better pay to resist the
cartels. Otherwise, Alvarez said, "There won't be any honest cops left."

Officers Targeted

An officer in the border city of Juarez, who asked to be identified
only as Jesus, was on vacation last spring when his supervisor and a
fellow officer were shot to death in the same truck Jesus drove when on duty.

A cartel had targeted members of the city's police force because many
of them worked with the rival Juarez drug organization. The
traffickers broadcast death threats over a stolen police radio.

In the weeks leading up to the killings, Jesus and fellow officers
patrolled only in groups. He switched personal cars and never drove
an official car home.

After the slayings, he reluctantly concluded that he had no future in
Mexico law enforcement.

He is now living in Colorado, where he has applied for asylum.

"The reality is that I can't trust anybody in Mexico," Jesus said.

A Case of Do or Die

Police work was in Julio Ledezma's blood. His father was a police
officer, and Ledezma was a mounted officer in Juarez before turning
in his badge for something different: He moved 320 miles south and
became a mariachi singer and vocal instructor in La Junta.

Nearly 15 years later, in 2007, reform fervor swept the area after
President Felipe Calderon's PAN party won regional elections. Ledezma
said he was impressed with talk of reorganizing La Junta's
"deplorable" police department. A civic leader encouraged him to
apply, and he became chief in November 2007.

His predecessor, he recalled, offered some advice: "Some people are
going to visit you. My suggestion is you cooperate with them."

Undeterred, Ledezma recruited and trained new officers and outfitted
them with weapons and bulletproof vests. Then the two cartel
representatives confronted him with their offer: Join us or die.

Playing for time, Ledezma told the men that he couldn't accept
without talking to the mayor's chief of staff. One of the traffickers
pulled out a cellphone and dialed the man's number. He was connected
on speakerphone.

The point was made: Ledezma could expect no help.

Ledezma regrets leaving behind friends, family and the life he had
built in Mexico. He is living in the U.S. interior but asked that the
location not be revealed, for safety reasons.

"It hurts to be here" he said. But crossing the border was his only option.

"They never forget," he said of the men who threatened him. "Sooner
or later they'll catch you."