The Mexican government has its own response to immigration from its southern neighbors: it detains, tortures, and deports Central Americans who come into the country. And occasionally it even goes after its own citizens of indigenous origin.

Recently, three Mexican Indian siblings from the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, were reportedly abducted and tortured by Mexican immigration officials. Amy (24), Alberto (18) and Esther (15) were on a bus to do seasonal agricultural work in northern Mexico:

…about half-way there, [Mexican] immigration agents boarded the bus, and after checking all the passengers’ papers, ordered the three siblings to get off. The officials accused them of carrying false documents and lying about their nationality. Then they told the youngsters that they would be deported to Guatemala, a country none would have been able to place on a map. The baffled youngsters—who speak the Mayan language Tzeltal but very little Spanish—were transferred to an immigration holding centre in Queretero city [sic—should be spelled Queretaro].

[Mexico tortures migrants—and citizens—in effort to slow Central American surge, by Nina Lakhani, The Guardian, April 4, 2016]

Blatant racial profiling! The immigration officials assumed the siblings were Guatemalan Indians, not Mexican Indians. The language barrier didn’t help.

Of course, profiling has its place if it’s done properly. However, the siblings in this case had various official Mexican documents such as birth certificates and voter cards. But the immigration officials insisted that these documents were fake. Torture followed:

Alberto, 18, was taken into a separate room by four agents who told him that unless he signed documents admitting he was Guatemalan, would die there.

“One pushed me, another was kicking my leg, and a third who was very fat gave me an electric shock here, on the back of my right hand,” Alberto told the Guardian through a translator.

“I really thought I was going to die, so I signed lots of sheets of paper—but I can’t read or write so I didn’t know what I was signing.”

The group was only released after eight days when a lawyer from an activist group filed a complaint.

The story continues:

Activists say that Mexico’s National Immigration Institute [Which combines the roles of the ICE/DHS with services to Mexican illegals in this country.]is increasingly operating like an unchecked police force—and say that that like the country’s security forces, it appears to be systematically using torture against detainees.

“The order appears to be to detain Central Americans at any cost, even if that means violating the constitution, picking up people based on racist criteria and detaining and deporting Mexican indigenous youth along the way,” said Gretchen Kuhener, director of the Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI), which launched legal action to secure the siblings’ release. The Mexican constitution states that citizens can move freely within the country, and do not need to carry ID.

Kuhener added: “This case demonstrates the power and impunity of the National Migration Institute. They can get away with it because it impacts highly vulnerable populations who may not speak Spanish, don’t know their rights, and are unlikely to complain.”

Note that these three siblings are from a family practicing subsistence agriculture in Chiapas. They’re not starving, but they don’t have much money. Farmhands reportedly only earn 60 to 80 pesos a day cutting coffee in Chiapas, but one of the family earned 200 pesos a day harvesting plants in the northern state of Sonora. Even within Mexico, there is a drastic gap between wages in Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, and Sonora, which borders Arizona.

Not only that, but Sonorans are of principally European origin. So there are racial, cultural, linguistic and economic differences between Chiapas and Sonora.

Similar to how illegal immigration functions in the United States, labor contractors are used to bring poor workers from the south to the north.

The Guardian’s Lakhani[Tweet her]  reports indigenous Mexicans are often mistaken for “undocumented” Central American migrants—a phenomenon I noted on VDARE.com over twelve years ago. She says Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights has recently investigated some 15 similar cases, mostly with victims from Chiapas, where people were detained based on their physical features, clothes and appearance. They were sometimes held for an extended length of time before convincing officials they were actually Mexican.

Naturally, this being the Guardian, blame is pinned on the United States, because of a supposed “crackdown on migrants driven in part by political pressure and financial aid from the United States.”

Reporter Lakhani claims this alleged American support for Mexican immigration control is “opaque.” However, the link provided within her article goes to Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations [by June S. Beittel, Congressional Research Service, July 22, 2015]. So the U.S. “financial aid” she’s talking about is actually meant to fight drug cartels, not control Guatemalan immigrants. In any case, a huge number of Central Americans are still making it through to the United States.

What really seems to be happening in Mexico: not some kind of evil Gringo program to limit immigration, but simply the breakdown of law and order. Guardianista Lakhani immigration reports that officials work closely with “armed private security officers” as well as police officers and soldiers. Theoretically, this is a law enforcement operation. By American standards, it appears like the operation of a lawless gang of thugs.

All of which shows that, whatever Mexico’s protests against American “racism,” it’s Mexico itself that appears to have the real problem in dealing with a non-white population.

It also shows another reason Mexican officials are so angry at the prospect of a U.S. border wall built by President Trump: An effective, Israeli style barrier would trap a lot of Central Americans in Mexico.

And whatever Mexico’s rhetoric about the glories of immigration, its white elite certainly doesn’t want immigration from the south into their own backyard.

American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here ; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.