Finally, a purge in Mexico's national institute of migration, INM

Last week, news broke that 7 regional bosses of the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) are under investigation for corruption. This is certainly good news, and organizations such as Amnesty International also backed  the process, though it called for a far more thorough investigation.

The measure come very late. The INM has long been commonly regarded as heavily infiltrated by organized crime, and recent horror stories where INM agents handed over captured undocumented migrants to the murderous Zetas are likely only the tip of the iceberg.

The suspended INM bosses: Tamaulipas, Aurelio Gerardo Alamán Bueno; in Veracruz, Humberto Alessandrini; in Tabasco, Luis Alberto Molina Ríos; in Mexico State, Jorge Octavio Armijo, and in San Luis Potosí, Elodia Gutiérrez Estrada. In Oaxaca, Omar Adrián Heredia had already stepped down, and is also under investigation.

Critics of the INM such as PRD Senator Carlos Naverrete, has called for a far more thorough purge, and Salvador Beltrán del Río, head of INM after the disgraced Cecilia Romero stepped down following the Tamaulipas mass grave discovery, has signaled a willingness to carry this out.

Yesterday, Beltrán del Río revealed that from August 2010-April 2011, more than 200 INM employees have been fired, with a penal process open against 40 of them for the graveness of their alleged offense. Special exams, including lie detectors, will be used on 1,500 employees in Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Chiapas, and agents will be periodically rotated in order to avoid collusion with organized crime.

For whatever it's worth, it is a start.

Who do you trust, Mexico's immigration institute or human rights commission?

Mexico's institute of migration (INM), which faced an increasing barrage of accusations of corruption and incompetence, and outright complicity with human smugglers, under the disastrous rein of its former leader Cecilia Romero, rejected claims by Mexico's national human rights commission (CNDH) that 214 "collective disappearances" - that is, 214 cases of mass disappearances - took place in 2010, with an average of 50 migrants forcibly taken away. This is an absolutely stunning figure.

Salvador Beltran del Rio, the new INM chief, dismissed this figures as "outside of reality," though he didn't offere any figures of his own.

How do you trust - the INM or the CNDH? Keep in mind that that this is the same INM in which the federal government recently announced a "purge" of sorts.

PRD Senator Rubén Velázquez López, a longtime defender of migrants and critic of the institute, simply calls the INM "rotten."

Cecilia Romero: "I will eliminate the dangers to Mexico"

The failed former head of the national migrants institute (INM) and candidate for the national PAN presidency, the ultra-right Cecilia Romero, when asked about likely presidential contenders Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Enrique Peña Nieto, declared, " "I will eliminate the dangers to Mexico".

Spoken like a true yunquista.

Two candidates register to contend for PAN's presidency: One point left out

Gustavo Madero and Cecilia Romero yesterday registered officially to contend for the PAN presidency. The former is a current national senator, and his appearance was a tour de force in that he arrived with a posse of more than 100 prominent supporters, including seventeen PAN senators, and the "moral leader" of the party, Luis H. Álvarez. The latter was until recently head of the INM, the national migration institute, until she was finally fired from her post due to incompetency and failure to curb corruption and abuses in her agency - accusations that harks back years, but was impossible to ignore following the murder of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas. Romero, however, rather than keeping a low profile is heading for an even bigger prize, the PAN presidency. Also of note: She is also a hardcore opponent of any state-level electoral alliance with the PRD.

Two points: 

1) What neither La Jornada nor Milenio mention in their coverage is that Romero is a close ally of the most ultra-right elements of PAN, and is moreover part of El Yunque, an extremist catholic secret society. 

2) The fact that Madero felt compelled to display such a show of force is to me an indication that her candidacy is taken seriously by the more moderate elements in PAN represented by Madero.

As is well known in particularly U.S. politics, displaying incompetence, ideological extremism, or utter stupidity was never a hindrance for postulating for public office; on the contrary, as can be well observed these days, it may even be a plus. The same goes for Cecilia Romero. 

Cecilia Romero and the Dunning effect

David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, and Justin Kruger, of New York University, are the brains behind the Kruger-Dunning Effect, which in all essence spells that most incompetent people are simply not even aware of how drastically incompetent they are, and consequently the cards are stacked against their learning from their mistakes. Unfortunately, society as a whole tend to pay their price for this illusory superiority.

Currently, I can think of no better example than Cecilia Romero, formerly of the  Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM). Following the Tamaulipas massacre of 72 migrants, she was finally forced out from the national migration institute, yet she almost literally had to be thrown out as she refused to leave. It was hardly the first time her job had been on line; she has been an utterly inefficient and incompetent leader, who only was able to cling on to her position thanks to her friendship with Señor Presidente, Felipe Calderón. 

Yet rather than quietly disappear and seek to leave her shameful tenure at the INM behind her, Romero is not only denying any responsibility for not doing enough to prevent the murder of these and countless other migrants, as well as an amazing rise in corruption within the INM, but is amazingly moving on with her previously declared intention to become the next party president of the PAN, the fourth declared candidate for the party presidency, yet one with a snowball's chance in hell to be elected by the PAN council. 

Yes, to paraphrase, Kruger-Dunning, some people are simply too dumb to realize how stupid they are.
Another case in point: Emilio "Etilio" González.

PRI and PAN demand full cleanup of the National Institute of Migration (INM)

In a great - and rare these days - display of bipartisanship, key PAN and PRI legislators such as Norma Leticia Salazar (PAN) and Miguel Ernesto Pompa Corella (PRI) called for a thorough cleanup and restructuring of the Instituto Nacional de Migración, the National Institute of Migration (INM), following the firing of its leader, widely regarded as inept, Cecilia Romero. This is important.

Pompa:

"We must ensure that those who come to the institute not only knows the subject, but have they have the will to apply the relevant law, are disposed to be held accountable, end the opaqueness, and rein in those who work in migration. I am from the border, and we see how they provide no protection to our countrymen and far from protecting them, they themselves extort them, so for this we will be keenly watching"

PRI Senator Carlos Jiménez Macía declared that Romero's leadership the past four years 
was "the darkest era in the migratory history of the country," given the increase in harassment, abductions, and outright murder of immigrants, above all central Americans since Romero took power in December 2006.  


PAN deputy Salazar Vázquez also emphasized a need to amend the penal code to ensure that those collaborating in the trafficking of migrants - Mexican, Central Americans, or otherwise - will be duly punished. Let's hope so. Clearly, however, the crimes of the INM go beyond a single leader, or even a handful of bad apples: Serious institutional restructuring is in order for trust to ever be gained in the INM. 

Cecilia Romero forced out of National Institute for Migration

While she has fought tooth and nail at several times the past years to retain her position as head of the National Institute for Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración, INM), Cecilia Romero was finally fired from the INM. The PRD in particular had kept up pressure on Romero following the most recent massacre of immigrants in Tamaulipas, deeming here "politically responsible" for the massacre, and senators altered the past weeks between demanding that she appear to explain the INM's failure to adequately protect migrants, and outright calling for her resignation. Romero adamantly refused to make any appearance in the Senate, which as recently as yesterday again called for her to report on the INM's work, or to step down.

As an indidation of how vehemntly Romero had fought her dismissal, the INM for hours couldn't even make itself present an official story for exactly why Romero was leaving.  Her work has been criticized by the National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH) as well as internatioanl observers such as Amnesty International. As recently as May, she brushed off criticism by the CNDH on the massive increased in abuses and kidnappings as mere "suggestions, not recommendations."

I find it ironic that while she survived three interior ministers, the apparent docile Francisco Blake Mora would be her bane.

Cecilia Romero: When will this inept official be relived of the "duties" she failed to perform?

When will Cecilia Romero be relived of the"duties" that she certainly has failed to perform as head of the National Institute of Migration? Very soon, it seems: Interior Minister Blake Mora refuses to confirm that she will remain in her post.  


Proceso reports in this week's print edition that the National Human Rights Commission and the national ombudsman for years have asked that INM take preventive measures to stop the veritable industry of kidnapping immigrants. Romero has never even bothered to send them a reply, let alone take any serious measures. The slaughtered 72 immigrants, dramatic as it is on its own, is unfortunately only the tip of the iceberg. Yet while Romero has weathered scandals in the past, I am hard pressed to believe she'll survive this one. 

Cecilia Romero, the National Institute for Migration, and Amnesty International

Cecilia Romero, head of the National  Institute for Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración, INM), has much in common with other Calderón appointees: She is close personally to the president, yet appears highly ineffectual at her job. Following the recent discovery of the 72 migrants in Tamaulipas murdered by the Zetas, who are the main traffickers in immigrants, attention has again shone on the incompetent head of INM, an institute she has led for four years. Romero felt compelled to publicly reject that she was not leaving the INM - again hardly the first time - though reportedly she has lost the confidence of Interior Minister José Francisco Blake Mora. Given that Blake Mora is also very close to Calderón, things might be different this time. 


On the subject of immigration, and particular in light of the gruesome events of the past week, I want to draw attention to a superb investigation by London-based Amnesty International, called "Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico." (direct PDF download here). It offers a tremendous amount of insights into the migrant situation in Mexico, as well as the role of Mexican state institutions. The INM certainly does not come across in too glowing a light, as it appears far more occupied deporting illegal immigrants rather than helping the victims of human trafficking, of rapes, of beatings, of abuse. INM comes across every bit as brutal and abusive as its U.S. counterpart.


Given the venomous poison spewed by the catholic clergy the past weeks (or years), it is worth pointing out, as the Amnesty report does, the tremendously important and good work carried out by local catholic priests in states such as Tabasco, Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, where priest-run shelters, as well as those of private individuals, not only give rest and comfort to exhausted migrants, but very often protect their very lives. 


While I personally believe most of these people are motivated by the kindness of their heart rather than by their faith, given the disconnect between these valiant individuals and their ultra reactionary high clergy leaders, the saying comes to mind that "christianity is that good, that even the catholic church has not managed to destroy it in two thousand years."