Mexico City – Mexico on Tuesday condemned the shooting death just north of the U.S. border of another undocumented immigrant, allegedly again by a member of law enforcement, the second such slaying in two weeks.
The government spoke out about the death last weekend in Texas of undocumented Mexican emigrant Ismael Segura Mendez.
“We regret and condemn the murder of our countrymen,” presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told the press.
Aguilar said that Mexico’s foreign ministry is investigating the death of Segura, whose body was repatriated on Monday.
The ministry itself later issued a statement saying that, via the Mexican Consulate in McAllen, Texas, it had requested that Texas state authorities conduct an exhaustive investigation of the incident “so that the required legal process is followed and strict justice may be applied.”
The communique said that in accord with the information collected so far, on Jan. 14 a Texas state policeman fired his weapon at Segura, who – in the preliminary version of events – had tried to resist arrest and fled in a vehicle from police.
The number of times the officer fired was not specified, but the communique added that the 23-year-old Segura “was transported to a hospital where he later died as a result of the frontal impact of a bullet in his chest.”
Earlier press reports attributed the shooting to a U.S. Border Patrol agent, which prompted comparisons to a Dec. 30 incident in California, where Mexican emigrant Guillermo Martinez was fatally shot by a Border Patrol agent shortly after crossing the border illegally.
In his comments, Aguilar referred to the earlier shooting.
The Vicente Fox government does not feel that there is “a state of violence on the border” against undocumented Mexicans, despite the two cases, Aguilar said.
“We assume that they are isolated acts and every death is regrettable and condemnable, (but) we cannot say that there is a state of violence on the border concerning emigrants,” he said.
Segura, who was working in the United States as an agricultural laborer, originally came from the town of Miguel Aleman in the northern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, the local press said.
Relatives of the victim told radio stations in Tamaulipas that Segura was apparently shot after he ignored an order to halt given him by the police officer, whom they described as a border guard.
The Martinez and Segura cases have added to the controversy generated by the plan by U.S. lawmakers to build more walls and fences along the 3,200-kilometer (2,000-mile) border with Mexico and to make illegal immigration a criminal offense.
Mexico has rejected such announcements as “wrong” and has insisted on a bilateral agreement “that permits a migratory flow that is legal, ordered and respectful of human rights.”
The Mexican government had said Monday that it will seek to mobilize employers, unions, churches and opinion-makers in the United States a bid to block Senate approval of a measure that would significantly tighten controls on immigration.
Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez told lawmakers here that Mexico will insist throughout its campaign that, without cheap Mexican labor, the U.S. economy would suffer because many low-paying jobs would go unfilled.
“The conversation we are initiating is with business associations, which are aware of the need for emigrants’ labor,” he said.
“The agricultural and business sectors are already worried about the fact that not enough labor is reaching them for the process of harvesting the fields,” the diplomat said, asserting that undocumented immigrants fill as many as 1.5 million jobs in the United States.
Officials estimate that more than 10 million Mexicans now live north of the border, roughly half of them without legal authorization.
Derbez referred again to the goal set by Vicente Fox when he became Mexico’s president in December 2000: a bilateral accord with the United States to foster an immigration flow that is legal, orderly and respectful of human rights.
But for Mexico it is more than just a question of protecting its citizens, seeing that remittances from emigrants in the United States now represent this nation’s biggest source of hard currency after oil exports.
Mexico and Central America reacted with outrage and alarm last month when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill calling for the construction of hundreds of miles of additional barriers along the southern border and for making unlawful immigration a criminal offense. The Senate is due to take up the measure soon.
Derbez said that besides seeking allies in the U.S. business community, Mexico is trying to enlist in its lobbying effort trade unions, religious denominations and activist organizations with an interest in immigration issues.
“The third route is through opinion-makers,” the foreign secretary said. “There is a negative view (regarding immigration) among these groups of opinion-makers, focused very particularly in two or three U.S. television networks, press and advertising groups, which need to be educated about the real benefits brought by the emigrants and made aware of studies we are doing on the matter.”
