Activists Blast Mexico's Immigration Law

May 26, 2010 -- Arizona's new law forcing local police to take a greater role in enforcing immigration law has caused a lot of criticism from Mexico, the largest single source of illegal immigrants in the United States.

But in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system.

And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona's that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally.

"There (in the United States), they'll deport you," Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. "In Mexico they'll probably let you go, but they'll beat you up and steal everything you've got first."

Mexican authorities have harshly criticized Arizona's SB1070, a law that requires local police to check the status of persons suspected of being illegal immigrants. The law provides that a check be done in connection with another law enforcement event, such as a traffic stop, and also permits Arizona citizens to file lawsuits against local authorities for not fully enforcing immigration laws.

Mexico's Foreign Ministry said the law "violates inalienable human rights" and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón's criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.

Yet Mexico's Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists.

"The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else's," said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.

In one six-month period from September 2008 through February 2009, at least 9,758 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico — 91 of them with the direct participation of Mexican police, a report by the National Human Rights Commission said. Other migrants are routinely stopped and shaken down for bribes, it said.