CentAm Migrants Suffer Brunt of Mexico Crackdown: Report

09/26/16 InSight Crime

Mexico’s crackdown against Central American migrants has increased human rights violations and crimes against the migrants, according to a new report, suggesting it is the vulnerable rather than the human smugglers that are suffering as a result of the new security measures.

The report A Trail of Impunity, compiled by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Mexican non-governmental organizations Fundar: Centro de Análisis e Investigación and Casa del Migrante, traces the impact of Mexico’s Southern Border Program, which was launched in 2014 to stem the flow of Central American migrants seeking to pass through Mexico to enter the United States.

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Priest reported kidnapped found dead, 3rd slain in Mexico in last week

09/25/16 CBS News

MEXICO CITY — A missing Mexican priest was found shot dead off the side of a highway in western Mexico days after he was kidnapped from his parish residence, state prosecutors said Sunday. He was the third Roman Catholic priest to be slain in Mexico in the last week.

The Michoacan state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that the Rev. Jose Alfredo Lopez Guillen’s body was found Saturday night in an area called Las Guayabas on the highway between Puruandiro and Zinaparo.

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Mexico’s other border

09/23/16 Financial Times

The UN estimates 400,000 Central Americans cross illegally into Mexico each year and as many as half of those are fleeing violence. As pressure builds for measures to stem the flow of migrants, the FT’s Jude Webber tells one woman’s story. Visit FT.com for more on the story.

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Priest Killings Highlight Mexico Govt’s Credibility Problem

09/22/16 InSight Crime

Local residents say the official account of how two priests were killed in Veracruz, Mexico is a “cover-up” for the truth about rampant organized crime in the gulf state, the latest illustration of the government’s striking lack of credibility with the Mexican people.

Alejo Nabor Jimenez Juarez and Jose Alfredo Juarez de la Cruz were kidnapped on the night of September 18, shortly after celebrating a 6:30 p.m. mass in the Veracruz city of Poza Rica. The priests’ bodies were found the next day riddled with bullets in a nearby area known as the “Devil’s Curve.”

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Mexico’s America Movil says proposes delisting from Nasdaq, Latibex

09/13/16 Reuters

Mexican telecoms giant America Movil (AMXL.MX) said on Tuesday its board will propose to shareholders that it delist its shares from the Nasdaq and Latibex stock exchanges, without giving any further information.

In a regulatory statement, America Movil also said it would offer shareholders the choice to receive the second part of their ordinary dividend in cash or in shares.

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Mexico steps up austerity plans in 2017 budget

09/09/16 Financial Times 

José Antonio Meade, Mexico’s new finance minister, has ramped up the country’s two-year-old austerity drive in his 2017 budget, pledging spending cuts and a return to a primary surplus for the first time since 2008.

The 2017 cuts add up to almost 240bn pesos ($12.9bn), well above the 169bn pesos in belt-tightening already announced for this year, and cuts of 124bn pesos last year.

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The weirdest number in the latest CNN poll on Trump’s immigration policies

09/07/2016 The Washington Post

Donald Trump’s immigration policies were a hit in the primary season — but as many expected, they’re broadly and almost uniformly unpopular with general election voters. The latest evidence: the new CNN poll.

• While Trump favors an enforcement-first approach, Americans prefer by a 51-to-36 margin to first deal with the illegal immigrants already in this country.
• Just 30 percent say the government should deport all immigrants living illegally in the country.
• Americans oppose Trump’s border wall, 58 percent to 41 percent.
• About three-quarters (74 percent) doubt that Trump can actually get Mexico to pay for the wall along the southern border, despite his regular assurances that it would.
• Previous polling has shown clear opposition to Trump’s plan to ban Muslim immigration.

And despite it all, the very same CNN poll shows that the immigration issue is basically a wash. While 49 percent say Hillary Clinton would make a better president on immigration, 47 percent prefer Trump.

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