Terrorists Closer to Home

Refugees

An old side effect of Mexican drug cartel violence is surging into prominence, the immigration to the U.S from Mexico should actually be classified as more of a mass exodus. The merciless cartels such as Knights Templar have begun being so violent and killed so many people that tens of thousands are fleeing Mexico attempting to find safe haven in the U.S. A total of 23,000 people are seeking asylum already within the first nine months of 2013. The Knights cartel has relatively recently taken territory from La Familia, who ruled their domain with significantly less brutality. Antonio Chavez a 47 year-old resident of La Ruana, Michoaca, has finally chosen to flee after enforcers of the Knights Templar drug cartel that if he didn’t pay $150 a month to play music on his phone in his store that if he didn’t pay they would kill him. This is a drug cartel known for decapitating people who don’t do as they are told or that are viewed as a threat. This number of refugee requests for asylum has quadrupled in growth and, according to villagers and human rights groups it reflects the growth of drug cartels against Mexican citizens of the territories they claim. Many people have lost a lot of family to cartel violence, and don’t want to follow their family to the cemetery, if they were lucky enough to be buried. Carlos Gutierrez, a 35 year-old resident of Chihuahua, says enforcers of La Linea cut his feet off because he couldn’t pay $10,000 a month in “fees” to pay Los Zetas the most cutthroat and ruthless cartel in Mexico. I don’t know anyone, personally, who makes $10,000 a month let alone can afford to give that away, however, with corruption so regular and widespread there is no one to defend the residents from the cartels. It is extremely upsetting to know this goes on in a country we are neighbors with and instead of taking care of local threats we’ve been focusing on other countries for the last dozen years, the Middle East and now Syria.

Sources Cited: Hastings, D. (2013) Fleeing wrath of vicious cartels, record-breaking numbers of Mexicans seek political asylum in the U.S., New York Daily News, no vol #, n.p.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/mexicans-fleeing-drug-cartel-mayhem-seek-ing-u-s-asylum-record-breaking-numbers-article-1.1493183#ixzz2inouNR5T