Center for Immigration Studies

“Surge Two”: Northward Flood of Mexicans Likely to Increase after U.S. Election

By George W. Grayson
October 2008
Backgrounders and Reports
Download the pdf version

Introduction

Escalating violence highlighted by decapitations, torture, and kidnappings plagues Mexicans, with drug cartel hit men and run-of-the-mill thugs generally targeting their victims. Money, revenge, ransom, extortion, access to drugs, and turf battles often explain these heinous activities. On September 15, 2008, however, a major act of terrorism took place for the first time. Around 11 p.m., as thousands of revelers celebrated the country’s Independence Day in Morelia, miscreants heaved fragmentation grenades into the crowd. When the smoke cleared, eight people lay dead, and more than 100 men, women, and children suffered wounds. TV networks beamed video footage of the blood-drenched scene to unbelieving viewers across the country.

Hundreds of military personnel and federal police flooded in to provide security for shocked citizens and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) offered $1 million (10 million pesos) for information leading to the capture of the masterminds and perpetrators of the carnage. Still, Deputy Emilio Gamboa Patrón, owner of a super-sized closet of skeletons and a big shot in the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), admitted that citizens were afraid to cooperate with authorities because so many law-enforcement officials were allied with criminal organizations.1 The army, held in higher esteem, may have more success in attracting informants.

Meanwhile, President Felipe Calderón and other dumfounded politicians speculated on who inflicted the wanton slaughter in the picturesque colonial city, 150 miles to the west of Mexico City in the chief executive’s home state of Michoacán.

Were the perpetrators members of the powerful Gulf Cartel, headquartered just below Texas in Tamaulipas state, whose military component is known as Los Zetas? Did they belong to the Gulf Cartel’s chief rival, the Sinaloa Cartel, centered in Sinaloa state, which nestles between the Sierra Madres and the Pacific Ocean? Could they be affiliated with La Familia (The Family) a shadowy drug gang that took credit for hanging seven banners blaming Los Zetas, three members of which have been taken into custody? Might they be guerrillas either in thrall to drug mafias or launching a freelance strike?

Apart from the delinquents’ identity was the ominous possibility that the attack foreshadowed an escalation in the strife: from homing in on specific victims to indiscriminate terrorism as occurred in Colombia two decades ago. The “Morelia massacre” took place barely a week after the bloodiest day in recent memory as sadists carried out 24 executions in Mexico State alone. A prisoner mutiny on September 14 and 17 at Tijuana’s La Mesa prison took the lives of at least 23 inmates and scores of convicts and guards sustained injuries.

These and other atrocities will profoundly change the dynamics of migration flows to the United States, which — contrary to conventional wisdom — have skyrocketed under Calderón, who took office on December 1, 2006. Mexico’s National Population Council (Conapo) recently reported, based on U.S. Census data, that the number of Mexican migrants living north of the Rio Grande grew by 679,611 in 2007 — a five-fold jump over the increase in 2006 (105,347).2

For cognoscenti of U.S. military policy, allusions to “the Surge” spark images of the five army brigades that President Bush dispatched to join 4,000 Marines in order to secure Baghdad and al Anbar province in Iraq. Off the radar screen is the likelihood of “Surge Two” during the months, if not weeks, after the next American president is sworn into office on January 20. This possible movement will entail not weapons-hefting soldiers and Marines in camouflage gear, but hundreds of thousands of T-shirt wearing, backpack-carrying Mexicans seeking to escape mushrooming insecurity at home.

What might induce Mexicans to risk life and limb even though the U.S. economy teeters on the brink of a financial precipice, the employment picture appears grim even for Americans, and state legislatures are amplifying their crackdowns on lawbreakers in response to constituent sentiment? How will the next U.S chief executive and Congress respond to the pressure sure to build on America’s southern border?

Traditional Rules of the Game

During the heyday of the self-proclaimed “revolutionary party,” which held the presidency from 1929 to 2000, drug kingpins cut deals with governors. The Rolex-wearing dons often anted up $250,000 simply to meet with state executives or their interlocutors to attain protection from the various police forces in their bailiwicks. Local law-enforcement chiefs in league with PRI politicians allocated the plazas, areas and corridors where the gangs held sway to produce, store, or ship drugs. They followed a “1-2-3 System”: a pay-off to authorities of $1 million for an interior location; $2 million for a coastal zone; and $3 million for a U.S.-Mexico border crossing. In return for generous bribes, or mordidas, the desperados pursued their illicit activities with the connivance of authorities and in accord with mutually understood “rules of the game.”…. MORE HERE FROM CIS