Mexico’s Drug War Refugees
WITH POWERFUL warring drug trafficking organizations and Mexico’s military laying deadly siege to one another, a growing number of citizens saw only one way to survive in 2008 and 2009: by fleeing over the American border. They have arrived with gruesome stories of kidnap, torture, extortion and senseless random brutality at the hands of ruthless trafficking groups. The arrival of these refugees is a new phenomenon, born of a civil drug war that has claimed 10,000 Mexican lives since 2006. In other parts of the world, wars push thousands of terrified refugees into neighboring countries. Reporter Todd Bensman set out to document this largely unscrutinized population of fleeing drug war refugees, and to show how America is receiving them. Bensman traveled throughout South Texas and northern Mexico to bring these untold stories to public attention. He found, in part, that upon reaching U.S. soil, the refugees face a mixed reception. An American deportation machine throws some of back into harms way while others are left to gamble their lives with a highly chancy U.S. political asylum process. Still others, Mexico’s wealthy elite, have discovered quite legal ways to buy their way into the U.S.
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PART I
US-backed covert op brings cartel vengeance on two brothers
U.S. businessman Alan Gamboa’s Nuevo Laredo Q-Tron store, goes up in flames
the night of Dec. 4, 2008 just across the street from a U.S.-backed clandestine anti-
cartel operation. courtesy news photo.
One brother fled across the Rio Grande and refuses to return to business and family in Nuevo Laredo. Kidnapped, another brother is presumed dead. The Gamboa brothers' tragic story offers a rare glimpse into an aspect of Mexico's drug war that gets little notice. The narrative of the conflict as a fight to the death between drug cartels and the Mexican government often excludes another player: the U.S. government. And as the Gamboa tale demonstrates, the American government's actions in Mexico can also lead to permanent flights out of Mexico - even by its own citizens.
PART II
Cartel lawyer who survived torture flees to U.S. hiding
An attorney’s wrists still bear the scars of his captivity and torture
Matamoros attorney at law Ernest Gutierrez Martinez is hiding with his family somewhere in America, still feeling hunted and prepared to bolt at any inkling of discovery. The sleeves of his shirt barely cover the handcuff scars on his wrists — a reminder that if the cartel's Los Zetas paramilitary enforcers find him, he won't go free a second time. But Gutierrez wasn’t just any lawyer. He represented the family of Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cardenas. Life for Gutierrez turned upside down when the drug lord lost a key legal fight.
Part III
Denying Sanctuary: U.S. expelling terrified cartel victims
Fresh graves for the dead in Juarez, Mexico, victims of cartel violence. AP
Largely outside the view of the American public, immigration authorities are vigorously opposing asylum claims filed by Mexican victims of cartel torture, extortion, kidnapping and death sentences. Some say current refugee law just doesn’t fit their circumstances; critics, though, say that sending these people back to face their demons demeans a fundamental American ideal.
Part IV
Mexico’s wealthiest drug war refugees buying U.S. haven
Wealthy Mexican entrepreneurs Pierre Oliver Gama Valdes and Manuel
Octavio Espejo Pantoja own businesses in Mexico that employ 500 people,
yet bought this small cafe in San Antonio as a means to get their families
to the safety of American soil. Photo: Bensman
Tens of thousands of Mexico’s most affluent citizens are fleeing to Texas and other states by securing obscure business visas that allow them to buy or invest on the American side. It’s an exodus that Latino leaders are comparing to the mass departure of Cuba’s ownership class after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. War-weary families are arriving on midnight flights after nightmares with kidnappers - heinous ordeals that leave them lacking limbs, ears and fingers; one lawyer tells about a well-healed client who arrived catatonic after kidnappers chopped off a foot and and sent it back to the familiy. They are able to legally and easily flee by buying businesses here, sometimes with no serious intention of turning a profit.
