The Guardian: Mexico Tortures Illegal Immigrants To Make Them Admit They're In the Country Illegally

Few things to note off the bat: We don't necessarily know this is true; it seems that it's part of the standard script for forcing countries to bend to a pressure group's will to allege all sorts of abuses that didn't actually happen. Don't believe me? Note the high number of hoax racial incidents and hoax rapes on college campuses.

A second thing to note, assuming that this is true, is that Mexico is doing this partly in response to pressure from the US -- we're bribing them to interdict illegal immigrants coming to the US from south of Mexico. This (if it's true) is how that particular sausage gets made.

Thus, the cowardly attitude of many US voters -- who want the unending tide of unaccompanied minors and illegal immigrants to finally stop, but they don't personally want to seem "not nice" by advocating any common-sense measures in the US, like a wall or an effective internal employment verification system -- forces other countries to do our dirty work out of our exalted sight.

The trouble with having your dirty work done away from your precious regard is that you can't actually see how dirty that work can get.

The typical American voter is partly to blame for this.

Assuming it's true, that is.

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.

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 three siblings were held for eight days before a lawyer from an activist group filed a legal complaint and eventually secured their release.

A growing number of indigenous Mexicans are being detained and threatened with expulsion by immigration agents looking for undocumented Central American migrants.

But we get to pretend we're "nice" and not at all racist while we pressure the Mexican government to keep illegals from coming through, using a bit of torture here and there.

posted by Ace at 03:27 PM

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