Monday, January 31, 2011

RMALC: It’s time to rescue and defend Mexico by putting an end to NAFTA

Red Mexicana de Accion Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC)

Mexico City. January 11, 2011: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented on the first of January 17 years ago, an anniversary that just passed by and that most Mexicans were unaware of. Not surprising really since NAFTA isn’t something to be celebrated. Rather this deal should be roundly condemned as an action taken by the Mexican government that has lead to the dismantling of our industrial infrastructure, the loss of thousands of jobs, and the deepening of poverty. And as if that weren’t enough, the country has lost its food sovereignty and has seen its rural agricultural base decimated.

Alejandro Villamar, a member the Executive Council of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC acronym in Spanish) says “I don’t know anyone in their right mind who after 17 years would say that the government got it right. Today even industrialists are willing to say that the deal has been a crap-shoot with businesses going under, companies being shuttered, and jobs destroyed.”

It is shameful that we now import 46 per cent of all the food we consume in this country. Shameful as well that we are down to producing 20 million tons of corn while having to import a further 12 million tons of subsidized (U.S.) corn - leading inexorably to the destruction of both small farmer and indigenous economies.

“And then the government is apparently shocked by the fact that so many people after being deprived of their livelihoods in the rural areas, seek to better their lives by heading to the cities, or by going north and thereby putting their very lives at risk,” states Villamar.

Alberto Arroyo Picard, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Mexico and also a member of the Executive Council of RMALC adds, “Hidden behind the propaganda lauding the growth in exports and increased direct investments is the reality that those export sales are built on prior imports, and that all of this has lead to the disintegration of the country’s chains of production while our productive infrastructure is being de-nationalized. Under NAFTA Mexico hasn’t morphed into an exporting powerhouse, rather it serves as a platform for transnational corporations to do their exporting from”.

Following a meeting held in Mexico City on the 10th of January, the NAFTA Free Trade Commission Ministers repeated a list of supposed benefits accruing from this commercial agreement, this despite NAFTA having failed to meet its own objectives.

Mexico’s Economy Secretary Bruno Ferrari, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and Canadian Minister of International Trade Peter Van Loan, together advanced the argument that opening up the borders and eliminating any remaining regulatory controls over commerce and investment are key principles that need to be deepened in order to make the North American economy more competitive. They claimed that NAFTA is the “catalyst for our economic recovery.” However, they seem to have forgotten that the economic model that this treaty is built upon is precisely the one that has caused the global crisis that we are now experiencing.

For RMALC these last 17 years have pointed out just how hollow government promises were when NAFTA was signed. At that time the officials were working to convince the public that NAFTA was going to be Mexico’s ticket to becoming a first world country replete with better salaries, better jobs, and enhanced industrial capacity, etc. Paradise was surely at hand!*

Even though NAFTA has meant that Mexico’s integration with the U.S. has been as a subordinate resulting in the loss of national sovereignty, the current government is not only insisting on deepening this dependency but it is also seeking to rekindle the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) made up of the top CEOs from the three countries - a grouping originally struck under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

For Mexico’s Economy Ministry it is very important to count “once again on recommendations coming from the region’s private sector”. In other words, the Ministry wants to get its marching orders from the heads of U.S. and Canadian transnational corporations plus the 10 Mexican corporate heads (NACC members) – all of whom the Ministry would call on to help shape national policy. In making this request of the private sector the Mexican government is clearly showing a foolish willingness to submit to that sector’s dictates.

The government is not even capable of adopting forceful measures when faced with the controversial halting by the U.S. of cross-border trucking. Rather, the government appears to be willing to accept the U.S. proposal for a ‘pilot program’ (not an option found in the NAFTA) with inspections and supervision (of Mexican trucks) to take place at the pleasure of the U.S. government.

For these and many other reasons RMALC believes that all Mexicans need to express their opposition to these types of developments. The time has come to rescue and to defend our Nation.

Press contacts: Marco Antonio Velásquez - secretario.rmalc@gmail.com , Alejandro Villamar - avillamarc@hotmail.com .

_______

* RMALC has published a series of occasional papers that point out the negative impact that NAFTA has had on most Mexicans – these can be searched for (in Spanish) under the Seccion de Libros on the web page www.rmalc.org.mx.

Translation: Rick Arnold. Common Frontiers-Canada

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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Community's Urgent Response Action Stopped ICE from Deporting Youth

NNIRR’s urgent response calls had a double impact:

  • ICE released Jonathan Sánchez on Tuesday, January 25!
  • Community calls also put the County Sheriff on notice for immigration-police collaboration

NNIRR deeply thanks everyone who made telephone calls and sent faxes and emails to the San Joaquin County Sheriff Steve Moore in Stockton, CA and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices in Sacramento demanding the release of Jonathan Sánchez.

The mobilization, the calls you made, had a double impact!

A week after local police jailed him just for his immigration status, Jonathan Sánchez was released yesterday afternoon on bond.

And the San Joaquin County Sheriff acknowledged the community’s call to stop collaborating with immigration policing.

Before the Calls

Prior to the big call-in mobilization, the Sheriffs were threatening Jonathan Sánchez with deportation and constantly haranguing him. The Sheriffs had denied him bail and the Sheriff would not use his discretionary power to release him from the ICE hold.

Police arrested Sánchez on Monday, January 17, after a car on which he was a passenger was stopped by police. Because he had done community service for a prior offense and the San Joaquin County jail is linked to ICE through “Secure Communities,” the Sheriff's office sent Sánchez’s fingerprints to ICE. ICE put a hold on Sánchez and jailed him for over a week.

During the week, Sheriff’s county jail staff and officers attempted to force him into signing away his rights so that ICE could deport him ASAP. County jail staff constantly harassed and tormented Jonathan to the point of tears.

The Sheriffs also ignored his pleas for health services; Sánchez requires dialysis three times a week.

After the Calls Began

As the calls and faxes mounted, Luis Magaña, a community organizer with the American Friends Services Committee in Modesto and working for Sánchez’s release, found out that county jail personnel started treating Sánchez differently and inquiring with him about how he was doing. Sánchez received dialysis treatment, even though his health was suffering from the stress and trauma of being incarcerated.

Magaña also reported that the community's calls also put new pressure on SJ County Sheriff Steve Moore to acknowledge the community’s concerns and calls to his office to opt out of “Secure Communities,” ICE’s immigration-police collaboration program.

Luis Magaña said that over the last year Sheriff Moore had ignored the community’s invitations to meet with them and hear their concerns. Magaña said that the urgent response calls showed the Sheriff that the community’s call to end the county’s collusion with ICE has broad support.

A victory for Jonathan Sánchez and a lesson for the movement

In the end, the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s jail officers had to recognize that Jonathan Sánchez and other inmates were humans and that they had to treat him and all as such. The calls also pressured ICE to change their stance and release him on bond; they also lowered the bond from $5,000 to $3,000. And a deportation was halted, even if temporarily.

While the County-ICE jailing and the harassment severely affected Jonathan’s health, your calls and support helped him win a much-needed reprieve to fight for his right to live here with his family and community.

This action was also successful for at least two reasons:

  1. People in his community reported the immigration-police abuse committed against Jonathan Sanchez to local groups and their networks; and
  2. His friends, family, and local and broader community activists and organizers in the immigrant rights and justice movements took action: They made calls and sent faxes and emails demanding protection of his rights and health, pressuring police and ICE to release him on humanitarian grounds and demanded accountability.

Additionally, Jonathan knew his rights – that he didn’t have to sign any document or answer questions and that he had the right to get a lawyer and his day in court.

Without these elements, things would have turned out differently for Jonathan Sánchez. Unfortunately, this happens to hundreds of thousands of people every year. While high profile raids, where ICE, often with local police collaboration, arrests dozens of people at a time, terrorize local communities and send shock waves across the country, the overwhelming majority of people are being jailed and deported through workplace and immigration policing of communities or when local police arrest someone like Jonathan and turn him over to ICE.

We must demand an end to all immigration raids and immigration policing collaboration and enforcement. ICE collusion with local police make our communities more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. If the San Joaquin County Sheriffs had upheld Jonathan Sánchez’s due process rights and not jailed him for ICE, an abuse would have been averted.

A small ring with a big message

Even though a phone call made for justice and solidarity may same like a small action, your calls made a big difference in a family’s life and let many communities know they are not alone. You also let ICE and other police know that they cannot get away with immigration-police collaboration, violating rights, racial profiling and criminalization.

Help build the movement! Please become a permanent member of NNIRR's family and community working together to report, document and stop abuses and organize for justice and human rights!

*

Join NNIRR on Facebook!

Follow NNIRR on Twitter.

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

BAJI, African-American Pro-Immigrant Group, Defends Birthright Citizenship and Condemns Attacks on 14th Amendment

By Opal Tometi

Phoenix, AZ (January 24, 2011) -- For the past year Arizona has been in the spotlight because of its harsh attacks on migrant populations and people of color. From the signing of the most far reaching anti-immigrant law (SB 1070) that legitimizes racial profiling, to its ban on Ethnic Studies (HB 2281), Arizona is rolling back the clock on the gains that the civil and human rights movements made in the United States of America. In addition to these legislative measures, Arizona recently banned affirmative action (Proposition 107) in the November 2010 election.

Sadly, Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer and other government officials, like State Senate President Russell Pearce, are relentless in their attack on the migrant community, attacks that also impact the African American community. Pearce's current foray is on the 14th amendment, an amendment that is well known for both the Citizenship Clause and Equal Protection Clause. It is now threatened because, after over one hundred years in existence, Pearce wants to ascribe a new interpretation.

The 14th amendment to the Constitution was written when slavery was finally outlawed in the United States. It granted formerly enslaved Africans in America full citizenship, and overturned the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in the historic Dred Scott v. Sanford case. In plain speak, the 14th Amendment was meant to ensure that all people born in the United States would be treated as equal citizens under the Constitution. However, Pearce is trying to strip away the citizenship rights of children who were born in the U.S. to parents who are not recognized as legal residents.

Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) Executive Director Gerald Lenoir explains that, "attempts to undermine the 14th amendment are unconstitutional and are part of the tradition of racism and xenophobia that our ancestors have fought hard to dismantle. Furthermore the term 'anchor baby', which has become associated with this bill is pejorative and is used to criminalize children of immigrants, especially those of color."

This attack on the rights and dignity of children demonstrates a sad shift in the trajectory of the national discourse on immigration. The assault on birthright citizenship through distortion of the 14th amendment and the reversal of gains made through the struggles for civil rights, only aims to disenfranchise the growing number of people of color in this country.

Arizona State Senate President Pearce, the key author and principal in pushing forward this legislation, has been known to fraternize with white supremacists. This is not the kind of thinking that we should allow to shape our nation. In this day and age when black and brown communities are continually marginalized and disenfranchised, we cannot allow for a reinterpretation of the 14th amendment that would only create a new caste of second-class noncitizens with no rights in any country. We cannot allow for the normalization of this type of anti-migrant policy that further institutionalizes xenophobia, racism and injustice in the U.S., as well as dismisses the gains of the civil rights movement

As Martin Luther King, Jr. poignantly said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." The Black Alliance for Just Immigration will stand with immigrant communities in Arizona and across the country in opposing the reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment and in asserting the birthright citizenship rights of children of undocumented immigrants.

*

Opal Tometi was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona and is the National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) is an education and advocacy group comprised of African Americans and black immigrants from Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean. BAJI engages African Americans and other communities in dialogue that leads to actions that challenge U.S. immigration policy and the underlying issues of race, racism and economic inequity that frame it.

Contact BAJI at www.blackalliance.org, info@blackalliance.org, and (510) 663-2254.

**

BLOG EDITOR'S NOTE: This opinion piece originally appeared in BlackNews.com

The Black Alliance for Just Immigration is also a member of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR)

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Monday, January 24, 2011

Make a call for justice: Stop ICE deportation of Jonathan Sanchez

URGENT ACTION REQUESTED:

Stop ICE deportation of Jonathan Sánchez

See Background info below

FIRST call the San Joaquin County’s Sheriff’s Office and ask to speak with Sheriff Steve Moore (209) 468-4400

** Just take 1 minute to tell them to free Jonathan Sanchez and uphold his rights and protect his health: (209) 468-4400**

You can also write a short message and fax it to Sheriff Steve Moore:

Fax (209) 468-5516

CALL (209) 468-4400 & tell Sheriff Moore’s office:

* Release Jonathan Sanchez immediately.

-- An ICE deportation could mean a death sentence for Jonathan because he needs constant medical care.

* Don’t violate Jonathan’s rights; he needs to have access to lawyer.
-- Jonathan was already freed by a juvenile court judge that requested that he provide proof of doing his community service.

-- If you turn him over to ICE, you will be violating his due process rights.

* By turning Jonathan over to ICE, you will make our communities more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

-- Members of our communities will not report crimes if they fear arrest and deportation.

* Do the right thing, release Jonathan Sanchez:

--Uphold Jonathan’s rights and well-being.

--Ensure community safety.

+

SECOND, call ICE offices in Sacramento (916) 491-2869:

* Demand ICE release Jonathan Sanchez on humanitarian grounds, ensure he gets legal counsel and defer his deportation.

-- I will hold ICE accountable for Jonathan’s health and well-being.

-- If ICE deports him, Jonathan may not be able to get the necessary health treatment and dialysis he needs to live.

** If ICE asks for Jonathan Sanchez’s “A” number: A-200869492 **

SUGGESTION: Speak in a respectful tone and do not react to their defensiveness. They may say something like “You can’t make threats without knowing the facts.” You can say, “We are concerned for his rights and well-being and your office’s actions threaten his health and well-being. You can stop an injustice from happening. Free Jonathan Sanchez.”

BACKGROUND

On January 17, after the car he was a passenger in was stopped by Stockton, CA, police, police arrested Jonathan Sánchez, a DREAM-eligible member of our community, for a prior charge and is now being held in the Sheriff County Jail awaiting transfer to ICE.

Jonathan Sanchez has malfunctioning kidneys and requires dialysis three times a week in order to live. He was denied dialysis treatment during the first four days of his incarceration. The Stockton Sheriff’s Office and ICE have confirmed that he will be transferred to ICE jail in Sacramento. ICE is threatening to deport him immediately on Tuesday, January 25.

He was arrested for a prior charge for which he had already fulfilled by doing community service. After going before a Juvenile Court last week, the judge released Jonathan and asked him to bring proof of having fulfilled his community service. ICE, however, put a hold on him and Sheriffs jailed him without bail at the County jail.

Fearing for his health, Jonathan Sanchez is refusing to sign his deportation orders and terrified for his life if he ends up being deported to Mexico. Your call will make a difference!

** Please send us an email with any communications or other information you get after calling the Sheriff’s and ICE offices. Thanks for taking action! **

EMAIL: agarcia@nnirr.org

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Saturday, January 22, 2011

What's behind the ICE arrests of 30 after an immigration raid in Ellensburg, WA?

The news of an ICE immigration raid is always devastating. The ICE raid in Ellensburg, WA, was a crushing and traumatic blow to the families of those arrested and their co-workers, forcing the separation of families and intimidating the community.

However, the ICE raid against the Ellensburg community is just the tip of the iceberg of immigration policing.

On Thursday, January 20, ICE agents stormed into local businesses and homes in Ellensburg, Washington and arrested 30 persons, for using false documents to work, among other charges. The ICE raid did exactly what immigration policing is meant to do:
  • Relatives, neighbors and co-workers of those arrested were terrorized and many reported going into hiding.
  • The ICE raid also sent the community into a tailspin; but community members and groups across the region took action to expose the impacts.
College Town, Community of Communities

Described by the media as a small college town, Ellensburg is midway between Seattle and eastern Washington state, nestled in a valley created by the slopes of Northwest mountains.

Ellensburg is also surrounded by prime farm land. Ellensburg's local businesses and workers service a mainly university community, with restaurants and other shops. But not everyone is at the university, studying, teaching, researching or administrating. Ellensburg is home to more than a college. There are food service workers, janitors, mechanics, clerks, waiters and waitresses and farm workers. Many of these jobs are held by "immigrants," which usually means Mexicans, Mexican Americans and other Latinos and people of color, citizens and non-citizens.

Ellensburg is also the gateway into eastern Washington state, also known for its rich farmland that stretches from Yakima to Harrah, Toppenish, White Swan, Wapato, Granger, Grandview, Sunnyside, Euphrates, Pasco and the Tr-Cities area. Eastern Washington's rich soil has been created over thousands of years from close by volcanoes. The last major eruption took place back in May 1980, when Mt. St. Helens exploded, sending volcanic ash rich in nutrients streaming into the valleys. The other volcano, immigrant labor, has also made eastern Washington's farm lands and their corporate and local owners, rich.

ICE Raids Destabilize Communities and the Economy

Right after the news of the raid erupted, Ellensburg community members and rights groups mobilized, held meetings and demanded answers and accountability. The fight to to stop ICE -- or at least push back -- has only begun. Yet there is a deep challenge whenever there is an ICE raid.

ICE raids like the one that just took place in Ellensburg are the exception, not the rule. If ICE arrested 30 workers, setting in motion their jailing and deportation, then imagine what it took to arrest, jail and eventually deport some 393,000 persons in fiscal year 2010?

According to NNIRR's on-going tracking and documentation of immigration policing abuses, detentions and deportations, in the last three fiscal years, ICE used Ellensburg-style raids to deport less than two percent of all those deported.

Operation Endgame:
Deport Everyone Who Can Be Deported

Everyday the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deports about 1200 persons from the U.S. interior. If these thirty were part of this daily, monstrous figure, how were the other 1170 detained, jailed and deported?

During the Bush Administration's years (2000-2008), and bleeding into the Obama Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and Operation Endgame, its initial plan were created in 2003 and implemented. Endgame is a ten-year plan set to end in 2012 with the central goal of creating the policing and staffing, policies and jails to deport everyone who can be deported. Right now DHS is working off a four-year bridge plan that sketches out the transition to Endgame's next move.

Through Endgame and other legislative means, the U.S. government has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents (during Bush's regime) and almost tripling the number of interior ICE police. DHS has increased exclusive jail-bed space for immigrants to the tune of almost 40,000 per day. DHS has also waived laws and environmental and labor protection regulations to implement the militarization of immigration control and border communities, with regard for the health and well-being of communities and the natural world. By early 2010, DHS had already build more than 600 miles border walls and other types of military equipment and strategy to detect movement on the border.

The momentum and policies for further integrating interior and border policing of migrants continues growing at alarming levels. How did we get this point of criminalizing "immigrants," where SB-1070 laws and ordinances across the country, in tandem with federal policies for immigration police collaboration, being implemented in county after county, dominate the political agendas of dozens of states and other localities?

Immigration Police Collaboration Is Killing Our Constitution

Immigrant rights and other civil rights and liberties organizations opposed immigration policing and collaboration in any form because they undermine community safety and erode Constitutional protections. This fight has continued taking the front-line as immigration policing continues spiraling out of control. Legislators who are building their power on an anti-immigrant agenda and sentiment have used this controversy to attack on the 14th Amendment.

In 2003, Congressmember Charles Norwood introduced the Clear Law Enforcement Alien Removal Act (CLEAR) that sought to deputize ALL police to enforce immigration laws. Although the CLEAR Act didn't make it pass the House of Representatives, this created pressure on the Administration to become more creative in unconstitutionally using local police to do the dirty work of immigration control.

During 2001-2003, ICE also began more successfully implementing 287(g) agreements with local and state police. Florida was one of the first states to sign a 287(g) agreement with ICE, in the aftermath of 9/11. Named after a provision in the 1996 immigration law, 287(g) allows ICE to train and supervise units of state and local police to work with their field agents to go after persons for immigration status violations.

In 2008, the DHS, under President Bush, started the "Secure Communities" program that allows police to send the fingerprints of persons they arrest to be checked against a DHS immigration database. If the fingerprints match with those in the DHS database, ICE will quickly order local police to hold the person until ICE can pick them up.

No charges, no lawyer, no court and the person jailed and not convicted of anything will automatically continue in jail until they are turned over to ICE for deportation?

As part of Endgame, the U.S. government plans to have "Secure Communities" agreements in every county of the U.S. by the end of 2012.

So how are the other 98% being arrested, jailed and deported?
  • Through E-verify (employer sanctions), where employers wield power workers because workers must provide documentation to their employer that they are "authorized" to work in the U.S. And since 2009, the Obama Administration has upped the ante and is extending E-verify rapidly.
  • Through diverse immigration policing programs and collaboration that are either illegal or fine-line -- like 287(g) and "Secure Communities -- or through local, county and state ordinances and laws like Arizona's infamous SB-1070 or its Prop 200 that gives additional power to police and other public officials and employees to detain persons even for suspecting them of being "undocumented."
When ICE raids and other immigration policing hit, communities everywhere, like Ellensburg just found out, are threatened with destabilization and division. When ICE and other police detain someone for immigration status offenses, community members will not hesitate to avoid the police, will not report crimes, for fear of being deported. After a raid, parents will stop sending their children to school, because they fear separation. Workers will stop going to work; others won't even go shopping, stop going to church. ICE immigration policing is bad for communities and the economy.

ICE Destroys Rights and Destabilized Communities

Over the next few days and weeks, groups in Washington state and elsewhere will offer assistance to the families in Ellensburg that are now suffering the trauma of an ICE action and separation. And Ellensburg will join hundreds of communities across the country that are now more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation because of ICE.

Read NNIRR's HURRICANE human rights report Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime and other reports documenting abuses and rights violations at www.nnirr.org

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Sunday, January 02, 2011

Frontera NorteSur: Two Sisters, Two Planets

Frontera NorteSur (FNS):
on-line U.S.-Mexico Border News


January 2, 2011


Security News

Two Sisters, Two Planets

Hugging a common land and embracing a sisterly river, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are linked in a zillion ways. But in 2010, the twin cities might as well have been on different planets. Depending on the press or law enforcement source, anywhere between 3075 and 3156 people were murdered in the Mexican city and the adjacent Juarez Valley.

Of the victims, 304 or 306 were women, again depending on the source. In the state of Chihuahua, about 5,400 people - including more than 400 women - reportedly fell victim to homicide. Both the female murder toll and the overall homicide rate represent unprecedented numbers for Ciudad Juarez and the wider region south of the border.

Since many murders are not reported or even sometimes deliberately concealed from the public, the actual murder toll could be higher.

Last year's homicide statistics prompted banner coverage in the Ciudad Juarez and Mexican press.

According to the Ciudad Juarez Internet news site Arrobajuarez.com: "The wave of violence initiated during the month of November 2007, which has led to the characterization of Juarez as the most violent city of the world, has continued its unalterable growth over and above official
efforts that have concentrated as many as 12,000 soldiers, federal police and local cops under what was called Joint Operation Chihuahua and then its successors."

After graphically describing the numerous ways in which "women, men, children and old people" were slaughtered in 2010, another Ciudad Juarez news site, Lapolaka.com, commented: "Thousands have fled the violence in Juarez and the state of Chihuahua. Commerce and economic activity stand devastated."

A hardy shout away from Ciudad Juarez, El Paso experienced a dramatically different reality in 2010. Five people were reported murdered in the US city - the lowest number in 46 years. Unlike Ciudad Juarez where impunity reigned supreme, all the 2010 murders in the Sun Bowl city were solved or saw arrests.

Within the El Paso crime statistics registered through December 25, assaults jumped from 10,801 in 2009 to 11,574 in 2010, while robberies increased from 429 to 473 during the same time period. However, burglary, larceny, auto theft, vehicle burglary and murder were all down in comparison with 2009. Overall, El Paso's crime rate dipped at least one percent from 2009 to 2010.

Although stray bullets said to have originated from Ciudad Juarez struck UTEP and El Paso City Hall on a pair of occasions last year, border "spill-over" violence from Mexico's so-called drug war was virtually non-existent in El Paso.

It's important to add that El Paso's crime rate decreased precisely in a time of significant population growth fueled by the expansion of Fort Bliss as well as the refugee flight from neighboring Ciudad Juarez.

According to Lapolaka, 36 people were murdered in El Paso from 2008 to 2010, the war years in Ciudad Juarez and an era when more than 7,000 people were slain in the Mexican city. Far more people were murdered in Ciudad Juarez in one year, 2010, than in the preceding 50 years in El
Paso.

The stark differences between the two sister cities provide plenty of grist for journalists, sociologists, criminologists, policymakers, pundits, and others.

Sources: La Jornada, January 2, 2011. Article by Ruben Villalpando and Gustavo Castillo. Lapolaka.com January 1 and 2, 2011. Arrobajuarez.com, January 1, 2011. El Diario de Juarez, December 31, 2010. Article by Luz del Carmen Sosa. El Paso Times, December 31, 2010. Articles by Adriana Chavez and Maggie Ybarra.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico


For a free electronic subscription email:
fnsnews@nmsu.edu

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