LA Times: Anarchy along Mexico's southern border crossings

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — The Mexican government is pledging to bring order to its wild southern border. The stakes couldn't be higher, and the job couldn't be more difficult. The proof lies in this dusty border town of 14,000 people. Here, unmonitored goods and travelers float across the wide Suchiate River — the boundary between Guatemala and the Mexican state of Chiapas — on a flotilla of inner-tube rafts. They cross all day long, in plain sight of Mexican authorities stationed a few yards upriver at an official border crossing. Some of the Central Americans are visiting just for the day. Others are hoping to find work on Mexican coffee plantations or banana farms. But many will continue north toward the United States. There is no guarantee they will ever get there. Lying in wait are Mexican criminals, and even Mexican officials, who aim to kidnap northbound travelers, extort money from them and sometimes even rape and kill them. About 10,000 such migrants have disappeared in Mexico every year since 2008, according to Mexican government estimates. Along with drug violence and the slaying of journalists, the ugly fate of the Central American migrant has become one of the darkest stains on Mexico's reputation.  The U.S. has as much interest as does Mexico in ensuring that the flow is stanched, particularly as Congress, in its consideration of immigration reform proposals, debates whether undocumented migrants can be effectively dissuaded from showing up on the U.S. doorstep. Central American migrants are a growing source of concern for the U.S. Although the number of Mexicans detained for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has been steadily declining, the number of non-Mexicans apprehended jumped from about 47,000 in fiscal 2011 to 94,500 in fiscal 2012, according to government statistics. Most were Central Americans, fleeing the region's stagnant economies, gang violence and street crime. (Despite their declining numbers, Mexicans, still represent the majority of people apprehended at the US border.) The Mexican government estimates that 300,000 of those who cross the nation's southern border each year without authorization are headed to the United States...more