Another price of ignoring our borders

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said Arizona’s treatment of illegal aliens “violates inalienable human rights.” And Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon, recently rebuked the United States Congress, saying Arizona’s illegal alien law is a “threat to civil rights and democracy.” When did living in a country illegally become an inalienable human right, a civil right?

Further, while chastising Arizona for trying to secure its border with Mexico, Calderon hypocritically tells people in his own country that the Mexican government has an “obligation” to secure Mexico’s borders. Moreover, the illegal aliens he wants to keep out don’t even want to stay in Mexico; they are just on their way to the United States.

More important, beyond arrest and deportation, Arizona is not the problem for illegal aliens. The problem is crossing Mexico, which is part of a 2,000-mile route from Central America to the United States where illegal aliens endure abuses we prefer not to discuss and pretend not to know about.

Amnesty International reports that the abuses they suffer makes their “journey through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world” as they share trails with organized crime and gangs that use the same trails to transport Columbian cocaine to the United States.

Kidnapping for ransom is routine, gangs often working with corrupt police at all levels of government. The gangs often kidnap more than 100 illegal aliens at a time, extracting phone numbers to call with ransom demands. Those who fail to provide numbers, or whose relatives fail to pay, are beaten or murdered, a very public message. Amnesty International documented that in just one six-month period gangs kidnapped and ransomed nearly 10,000 illegal aliens.

According to Mexico Senator Maria Elena Orantes, the gangs also sell women into prostitution, 80 percent of the women traveling through Mexico to the United States ending up in some type of sex slave trade. She further claims that along the border area between Guatemala and Mexico, gangs have sold over 100,000 women and girls into prostitution. The Migration Policy Institute reports that women are so certain of rape along the trail that before starting the journey many get an injection to prevent pregnancy.

Although securing our borders is a primary constitutional duty of our federal government, it has refused to do so. Some of our senators and congressional representatives even claim it is racist, discriminatory and violates human rights to arrest and deport illegal aliens. Our politicians trade these false claims for votes rather than doing their job and securing our borders.

The porous border between the United States and Mexico has enabled between 12 million and 20 million people to enter and live in our country illegally. Further, by not arresting and deporting the illegal aliens, the federal government is actually promoting illegal entry into this country.

Worse is when Central Americans learn that many of our senators and representatives agree with President Calderon criticizing Arizona, creating nothing more than an open invitation to continue entering the United States illegally.

Our government is in part responsible for the unending abuses of illegal aliens in Mexico. How? Do you think if people knew it was impossible to cross our border illegally, they would still be willing to face the risks in Mexico? No, but our unsecured borders are so enticing that it was worth the risk for the over 100,000 women and girls who now live in sex slavery.

Are President Obama and Congress willing to accept their share of the responsibility for this inhumanity occurring in Mexico? Are they willing to secure our borders, near ending entering this country illegally, near ending the trail of bodies and abuses in Mexico?

They have the option of helping to prevent the kidnapping, murdering, raping and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. Rather than piously claiming to protect illegal aliens, can the president and Congress understand that being poor in Guatemala or Honduras is a better life than being raped and sold into sex slavery in Mexico?

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