Cartel Members Claim Asylum After Fleeing Gun Battle

2019-06-17
Source: WashingtonGuardian
by: Andrew R. Arthur

MS-13 gang member by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is licensed under Flickr Public Domain

Last week I discussed a Washington Post article focused on Rodrigo Carrillo, a struggling coffee farmer from Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Carrillo, facing an unprofitable crop, has decided to depart Guatemala with his five-year-old son, Marvel, fraudulently transit Mexico, and pay $2,000 to a smuggler to bring him across the Southwest border in order to claim asylum. While I questioned the validity of that claim, recent news reports have described an even more questionable and bizarre one.

KVOA News 4, the Tucson NBC affiliate, has reported on a June 10, 2019, gun battle that took place across the border from Douglas, Ariz., in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. That gun battle apparently involved an internal dispute among members of the Sinaloa drug cartel and, by the end, almost 12 people had died. A gun battle directly across the border from the United States in which almost a dozen people were killed would be shocking enough.

One passage in that report, however, underscores the biggest difficulty the United States faces in securing its Southwest border: "Sources told News 4 Tucson four cartel members showed up at the port of entry asking for asylum and claimed 'credible fear'."

Given the low standard, the regrettable thing is that those cartel members likely were found to have a credible fear of persecution and/or torture.

Source: Center for Immigration Studies

MS-13 gang member by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is licensed under Flickr Public Domain

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