Even as the illegal immigration crisis continues and more states (including Texas) are considering Arizona-style legislation to counteract federal indifference to the influx across the United States’ southern border, a report just released provides new insights regarding the lawlessness which reigns in Mexico.
According to Borderland Beat (a website which offers up-to-date information on the state of chaos in Mexico), 98.5 percent of crimes now go unpunished in that nation, which elitists sought to merge with the United States in a North American Union. As Borderland Beat reports:
Some 98.5 percent of the crimes committed in Mexico go unpunished, the Milenio newspaper reported over the weekend, citing a new study by the Monterrey Institute of Technology.
Of the 7.48 million crimes — both federal and common — committed in Mexico this year, according to the study, the conviction rate has been only about 1 percent.
Only about 64,000 crimes have been reported, the study found.
About 15 percent of reported crimes are investigated, but only about 4 percent of the cases are completed due to the “slowness in the majority of the proceedings and failure to comply with the law,” the study said.
The average length of an investigation, however, has been reduced substantially from 269 days in 2006 to 130 days today.
Only about 1.75 percent of suspects ever get convicted, with the sentences imposed totaling 112,249.
The scale of the drug war raging in Mexico and the apparent unwillingness of the governments of Mexico and the United States to keep the unrestrained criminality from washing across the border into Arizona and other border states is approaching a crisis point. A November 18 story for the Mercury News offers an overview of the increased rate of kidnappings for ransom, which is one aspect of the spread of Mexican crime:
While kidnappings for ransom are prevalent in some Latin American countries and have started to occur in parts of this country, they are highly unusual for San Jose [California]. Nonetheless, San Jose police are concerned enough that they called a news conference Wednesday to bring attention to the crime.
“These cases are a relatively rare occurrence up here; we just don’t see them,” acting Police Chief Chris Moore said. “But we are seeing them in Arizona and Southern California. So if members of the public see an undercover police operation, if they are not sure, call 911. We want them to be aware and to assist us.”
Kidnappings for ransom similar to the one alleged to have occurred Nov. 4 in San Jose are increasing in the U.S., particularly in the Southwest, according to law enforcement experts. There have been so many in Phoenix that the police department there created a task force to deal with ransom kidnappings, which peaked in 2008, they say, at about 360. So far this year, police there say they have investigated 188 kidnappings for ransom, which experts say have spread to the city because of its proximity to the Mexican border.
Foreign Policy does not yet include Mexico among the ranks of the “failed states”; amazingly, in their estimation, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia are all considered to be in significantly worse shape than Mexico. But the reality of the situation across the border was well-summarized by Firmin DeBrabander for The Baltimore Sun:
Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.5 million across the Rio Grande river from El Paso — once safer than most U.S. cities of comparable size — now knows 2,000 murders per year. By comparison, the 30-year long “Troubles” in Northern Ireland claimed 3,000 lives in all. Throughout northern Mexico, mayors have been assassinated (one was recently stoned to death), and a former presidential candidate was kidnapped in May (he’s still missing). Open air gun battles and car bombings are becoming increasingly common occurrences. Headless corpses appear alongside highways, and last month a mass grave of 70 Central American migrants was uncovered, purported victims of the Zetas, one of Mexico’s most vicious cartels.
The Mexican cartels operate — and massacre — with utter impunity. They think nothing of descending the whole nation into war in their struggle to control the lucrative drug routes to the US. The Mexican government has deployed the military to patrol the streets, but since this move, the violence has only escalated. That the army has been deployed and the cartels respond with car bombs and mass graves spells deep trouble. As Rousseau pointed out, the government should be very careful in resorting to violence; if it is met with ever bolder reprisals (car bombs and mass graves, for example), it risks delegitimizing its authority.
Cross-border chaos is an active threat to the security of Americans — especially for those who live closest to the border. And yet, for now, the main security threat in the estimation of the federal government is posed by innocent travelers who would like to board an aircraft without surrendering their Fourth Amendment rights.
Photo: AP Images
