Tag Archives: Mexico

Driver due in court in Texas for deaths of nine smuggled in truck

Police officers work on a crime scene after eight people believed to be illegal immigrants being smuggled into the United States were found dead inside a sweltering 18-wheeler trailer parked behind a Walmart store in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. July 23, 2017.

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – The driver of a truck in which at least eight men were found dead alongside dozens suffering in sweltering conditions in San Antonio, Texas was expected to appear in court on Monday, over what authorities called a case of ruthless human trafficking.

Thirty people, many in critical condition and suffering from heat stoke and exhaustion, were taken out of the vehicle parked outside a Walmart store that lacked air-conditioning or water supply, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said. A ninth man died later at a hospital.

Outside temperatures topped 100 degrees F (37.8 C).

Another person found in a wooded area nearby was being treated, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas said. All the dead were adult males.

“All were victims of ruthless human smugglers indifferent to the well-being of their fragile cargo,” said San Antonio-based U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin Jr.

“These people were helpless in the hands of their transporters. Imagine their suffering, trapped in a stifling trailer.”

The truck’s driver, named by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Florida, was arrested, with a criminal complaint set to be filed in federal court in San Antonio on Monday.

Bradley is expected to have an initial court appearance soon after, the U.S. attorney said.

Several agencies have launched investigations into the case.

The dead men, who have not yet been identified, were discovered after officials were led to the trailer by a man who asked a Walmart employee for water.

San Antonio is about 150 miles (240 km) north of the Mexico border.

Mexico’s government said it deplored the deaths and that it had asked the authorities for an exhaustive investigation.

In a statement, it said its consul general in San Antonio was working to identify the victims’ nationalities and, if necessary, repatriate their remains to Mexico.

 

U.S. STEPS UP RAIDS

Raids on suspected illegal immigrants have increased across the United States in recent months, after President Donald Trump vowed to crack down on entrants without authorization or overstaying their visas.

In Texas alone, federal immigration agents arrested 123 illegal immigrants with criminal records in an eight-day operation ending last week.

The San Antonio deaths come more than a decade after what is considered the worst immigrant smuggling case in U.S. history, when 70 people were found stuffed into an 18-wheeler. Nineteen died in the incident in Victoria, Texas, about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of San Antonio, in May 2003.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said other suspects fled the scene as police arrived. Video showed “there were a number of vehicles that came and picked up other people who were in that trailer,” he said.

Twenty people were airlifted to hospitals in conditions ranging from critical to very critical, Hood said. Eight more are listed in less serious condition.

McManus said those in the truck, whose origins were unclear, ranged from school-age juveniles to adults in their 30s. He said the Department of Homeland Security had joined the investigation.

Experts have been warning that tougher immigration policies could make it harder to stop human trafficking. Measures tightening international borders encourage would-be migrants to turn to smugglers, while fear of deportation deters whistle-blowing, they said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials defended the use of tough methods to fight human smuggling.

“So long as I lead ICE, there will be an unwavering commitment to use law enforcement assets to put an end to these practices,” the agency’s acting director, Thomas Homan, said in a statement.

The Border Patrol has regularly reported finding suspected immigrants in trucks along the U.S. border with Mexico.

This month, 72 Latin Americans were found in a trailer in Laredo. In June, 44 people were found in the back of a vehicle in the same Texas city, which lies directly across the Rio Grande from Mexico.

San Antonio has a policy of not inquiring about the immigration status of people who come into contact with city officials or police.

It was among several cities in Texas that filed a federal lawsuit last month to block a state law set to take effect in September that would force them to cooperate closely with immigration agents.

“San Antonio will not turn its back on any man, woman, or child in need,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a statement responding to the truck deaths.

(Corrects headline, paras 1 and 2 to show that eight bodies were found in truck, not nine; a ninth man died later at a hospital.)

 

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York); Editing by Chris Michaud and Clarence Fernandez)

 

Mexico City spike in crime, violence sparks fears of cartel warfare

Police vehicles patrol the streets, after suspected gang members were killed on Thursday in a gun battle with Mexican marines in Mexico City, Mexico, July 21, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

By Gabriel Stargardter

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The sight of vehicles set ablaze by cartels has mostly been confined to lawless stretches of Mexico’s provinces, so the appearance of burning buses in Mexico City this week has stoked fears that the drug gangs’ violence is spreading to the capital.

The so-called narco-blockade on Thursday in the tough Mexico City suburb of Tlahuac occurred after Mexican marines gunned down eight suspected gangsters in broad daylight, a highly unusual incident that underlined a recent spike in violent crime.

“The city’s authorities have lost control of the situation,” said Jose, a veteran Mexico City policeman who spoke on the condition his surname be withheld.

“Now the cartels are getting stronger, they can’t control them any more. That’s why they asked the marines to come in.”

All told, 206 murder investigations were opened in Mexico City between May and June, making it the bloodiest two month-period on record in the capital, official data show.

Mexico City and its urban sprawl form the economic heart of the country, accounting for roughly a quarter of gross domestic product, according to the OECD, and the rise in violence is a major embarrassment for the Mexican government.

The crime spree mirrors a rising tide of violence nationally that has exposed major law and order shortcomings by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, less than a year before the next presidential election.

Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, who harbors his own presidential ambitions, has also come under fire for not doing enough to protect the capital, and for saying repeatedly that drug cartels do not operate in the city.

In a news conference on Friday, Mancera said the suspects belonged to a “a big, violent criminal organization whose operations were no longer confined to Tlahuac,” noting they traversed the city in armed convoys.

“From my point of view, they didn’t have the structures and size that we associate with cartels,” he added.

Mexico’s criminal underworld has mutated in recent years, thanks to a prolonged military-led assault that smashed the cartels into hundreds of informal crews with little experience in cross-border trafficking.

As these smaller groups jostle over the kidnapping and extortion rackets, violence has soared. The country’s murder tally this year is on track to post the highest since modern records began in 1997.

Various factors are seen behind the capital’s rise in violence.

Weak economic growth and chronically low wages drive youths in poor neighborhoods into crime. These troubled youths often extort small business owners, eventually shuttering them which makes jobs even harder to come by, according to local policeman Jose.

He also dismissed the idea that criminal gangs were not in the city, saying both La Familia Michoacana and the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel operate in the capital.

Francisco Rivas, director of the National Citizen Observatory, a civil group monitoring justice and security in Mexico, said regardless of what constitutes a cartel, the days of the capital being isolated from the drug violence were over.

“What’s happening in Mexico City reflects the national outlook,” he said. “We have a crisis of organized crime.”

(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz and Ana Isabel Martinez; editing by Dave Graham, G Crosse)

U.S. farm lobby turns up heat on Trump team as NAFTA talks near

FILE PHOTO - U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer speaks during a ceremony at the White House in Washington, U.S. on May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With talks to renegotiate the NAFTA trade pact just weeks away, U.S. farm groups and lawmakers from rural states are intensifying lobbying of President Donald Trump’s administration with one central message: leave farming out of it.

Trump blames the North American Free Trade Agreement – the “worst trade deal ever” in his words – for millions of lost manufacturing jobs and promises to tilt it in America’s favor.

But for U.S. farmers the 23-year old pact secures access to stable, lucrative markets in Mexico and Canada that now account for over a quarter of U.S. farm exports. (Graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/2tNMtlc)

Now they fear this access could become a bargaining chip in efforts to get a better deal for U.S. manufacturers.

“Perhaps some other sectors of our economy are given better terms and in exchange for that agriculture tariffs would be reintroduced,” said Joe Schuele, a spokesman for the U.S. Meat Export Federation in Denver, Colorado.

Another concern is that the mere uncertainty of open-ended trade talks could drive Mexico to alternative suppliers of grains, dairy products, beef and pork.

Mexico became even more crucial after Trump’s pullout from a vast Pacific Rim trade pact negotiated under Barack Obama dashed farmers’ hopes of free access to more markets.

Next week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is due to outline the administration’s goals for the NAFTA talks to Congress and the farm lobby has turned up the heat in the past weeks to ensure that its interests will make Lighthizer’s list.

Operating under the umbrella of the U.S. Food and Agriculture Dialogue for Trade, more than 130 commodity groups and agribusiness giants since Trump’s inauguration have been bombarding the new administration with phone calls and letters, public comments to USTR and face-to-face meetings with top officials who have Trump’s ear.

“Our first ask is to do no harm,” said Cassandra Kuball, the head of the umbrella group.

Lobbyists said that Lighthizer, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have been receptive, but the wild card is how Trump ultimately will come down on the talks. They also wonder what concessions Mexico will seek from Washington in the talks due to start in mid-August.

Among the groups involved are the American Soybean Association, Corn Refiners Association and National Grain and Feed Association and firms such as Land O’Lakes, Inc., Tyson Foods<TSN.N>, Inc., Louis Dreyfus Company North America, Archer Daniels Midland Co. and others.

For example, U.S. cotton producers, marketers and shippers in mid-June warned the Trump administration that any weakening of NAFTA “would threaten the health of the U.S. industry and the jobs of the 125,000 Americans employed by it.”

QUADRUPLING EXPORTS

Annual U.S. farm exports to Mexico have grown from about $4 billion in 1994, when NAFTA began, to an estimated $18.5 billion this year. With Canada included, that number is forecast to reach $40 billion, quadrupling under NAFTA.

Republican lawmakers from rural states that have backed Trump in the 2016 election have sought to leverage their political clout to press farmers’ case at a time when they struggle with low crop prices.

Pat Roberts, Republican senator from Kansas, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, said he used an unexpected invitation for a private White House meeting with Trump to plug in agriculture’s cause in NAFTA and beyond.

“He (Trump) wanted to know what was happening in farmland,” Roberts said. “I told him we went through a very rough patch and if we did not have a strong, robust, predictable trade policy, it’s going to make life much more difficult in farm country,” Roberts said of the 45-minute meeting in late June.

In May, 18 Republican senators, mainly from pro-Trump farming states, wrote the administration about the “tremendous growth” in U.S. trade with Mexico and Canada as a result of NAFTA.

“Efforts to abandon the agreement or impose unnecessary restrictions on trade with our North American partners will have devastating economic consequences,” they warned.

Trump’s pledges to crack down on immigration and calls for a wall along the border with Mexico also vex farm state lawmakers.

“What I really need is a good, solid immigration system,” South Dakota Republican Senator Mike Rounds said. Given his state’s low unemployment rate of just around 2.8 percent, farmers and ranchers need better access to legal foreign labor, he said.

STORM OVER SUNNY SLOPE

Agriculture Secretary Perdue got a taste of farmers’ angst when met cattle ranchers in Nebraska on May 20. The event was held shortly after Washington agreed with China to resume beef exports, but some 60 ranchers who gathered at U.S. Senator Deb Fischer’s Sunny Slope Ranch quickly turned to NAFTA.

“If the president wants to renegotiate that agreement with our neighbors and partners in Mexico and Canada please leave the ag portion of that discussion out,” said Pete McClymont, executive vice president of Nebraska Cattlemen, summarizing the discussion.

While lobbying in Washington, some Republican lawmakers have also met with Mexico’s ambassador and U.S. farming representatives traveled south to assure their partners unsettled by Trump’s “America First” mantra.

“The common comment is: ‘why are you here? The problem is not with us. The problem is in Washington. Why are you talking to us?'” said Tom Sleight, president and CEO of the U.S. Grains Council. “The new normal is that feed buyers, millers, grain buyers are actively looking at alternative sources,” he said.

It will take months to find out how effective the lobbying was. Meantime, some are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

Daryl Haack, a corn and soybean farmer from Primghar in northwest Iowa, like others fears retaliation from either Canada or Mexico, but is optimistic it will not come to that.

“I think President Trump is a negotiator,” he said. “I think he runs bluffs. A lot of negotiators will do that.”

(Reporting By Richard Cowan, Additional reporting by Mark Weinraub, Karl Plume and Theopolis Waters in Chicago; Editing by Caren Bohan and Tomasz Janowski)

Spyware used on investigators probing missing students in Mexico: report

FILE PHOTO: Relatives hold posters with images of some of the 43 missing students of Ayotzinapa College Raul Isidro Burgos as they take part in a march to mark National Teachers' Day along Reforma avenue, in Mexico City, Mexico May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero/File Photo

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – An international investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico was targeted with spying software sold to governments to fight criminals and terrorists, according to a report published on Monday.

The spying attempt was the latest example of civilians who have been targeted by the software known as Pegasus, which Israeli company NSO Group only sells to governments, according to the report by Citizen Lab, a group of researchers based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has asked the attorney general’s office to investigate previous charges that the government spied on private citizens, saying he wanted to get to the bottom of the accusations that he called “false.”

Citizen Lab said it had found a trace of the Pegasus software in a phone belonging to a group of experts backed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) who had traveled to Mexico to investigate the disappearance of the 43 students.

The attempt to infect the phone occurred in early March 2016, following criticism by the IACHR-backed group that the Mexican government had interfered with its investigation, Citizen Lab said.

“This is a very delicate matter … a big problem. Any state must react immediately,” Angela Buitrago, part of the IACHR’s team of experts, told Reuters.

Buitrago said that if any sensitive data was leaked it could have influenced the investigation.

The disappearance of the students from a rural teachers college in 2014 marked one of Mexico’s worse atrocities, and the government’s handling of the case marked a low point for Pena Nieto’s popularity.

Last month, Citizen Lab identified 15 activists, human-rights lawyers, journalists and opposition officials who had also seen attempts to infect their phones with the spyware.

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia and Liz Diaz; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Mexico, U.S. vow to bolster joint fight against drug cartels

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly shake hands with Mexico's Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong after deliver a joint message at the Secretary of Interior Building in Mexico City, Mexico, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico and the United States are seeking to forge closer ties to fight arms trafficking and organized crime, Mexico’s interior minister said on Friday, as he and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly vowed to redouble efforts to battle drug cartels.

“We’re looking at new forms of cooperation on issues like arms trafficking … and obviously combating international criminal organizations dedicated to drug trafficking,” Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told a news conference.

Osorio Chong did not provide details as he spoke alongside Kelly, who was coming to the end of a three-day visit to Mexico.

Kelly, who on Thursday traveled to one of Mexico’s most lawless regions to discuss the military’s efforts to battle drug traffickers and observe opium poppy eradication, said the two sides aimed to strengthen joint security cooperation.

“We are also working together to defeat the scourge of illegal drugs, with special emphasis on the heroin, cocaine and fentanyl that is flooding the hemisphere and resulting in deaths in both of our countries,” Kelly said.

U.S. deaths from opiates including fentanyl and heroin have risen sharply in the last few years, putting the issue at center stage in efforts to strengthen cooperation on security matters between Mexico and the United States.

Kelly said U.S. President Donald Trump aimed to create “stronger, durable bonds” between the two neighbors, which have been at starkly at odds on some areas of policy under Trump, particularly the Republican leader’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

(Reporting by Michael O’Boyle; Editing by Tom Brown)

At least 28 killed in bloody Mexican prison fight

Riot police enter a prison after a riot broke out at the maximum security wing in Acapulco, Mexico, July 6, 2017. REUTERS/Troy Merida

By Uriel Sanchez

ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) – At least 28 inmates were killed when a brutal fight broke out in a prison in the Mexican Pacific resort of Acapulco on Thursday, one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the country’s troubled penal system in recent years.

Acapulco is the biggest city in Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most lawless states and a center of opium poppy production that has been a major concern to U.S. officials.

The prison carnage was particularly embarrassing to Mexico as it came the same day U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was visiting Guerrero, in Mexico’s southwest.

Guerrero state security official Roberto Alvarez told reporters the fight broke out between rival gangs in the maximum-security wing of the prison. In addition to 28 dead, three people were injured, he said.

Authorities found bodies throughout the wing, inside and outside the kitchen, as well as the area for conjugal visits, he said. A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters four of the dead were decapitated.

Alvarez told Reuters the prison was close to 30 percent over capacity. It was built for 1,624 inmates but had 1,951 men and 110 women behind its walls, he said.

Despite reports of gunfire in the prison, all the casualties were due to wounds from sharp instruments, such as the improvised weapons that are fashioned by inmates, Alvarez said.

Violent crime in Mexico has jumped in recent months and 2017 is on track to be one of its bloodiest on record.

The number of murder cases in the first five months of 2017 jumped nearly 30 percent and murder investigations hit a record high in May.

Drug gangs have been battling for control amid a power vacuum following the January deportation of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to the United States.

The United States and Mexico are discussing how to crack down on the cartels now that most of the established capos have been killed or captured in a decade-long, military-led campaign.

Kelly, one of the main links between Mexico’s government and the Trump administration on migration and security cooperation, arrived in Mexico on Wednesday and has held meetings with other top officials, including President Enrique Pena Nieto.

He visited a military base outside Acapulco on Thursday to meet Mexico’s army and navy chiefs.

Kelly discussed the military’s efforts to battle drug traffickers and observed the deployment of troops to destroy opium poppy fields, the defense ministry said in a statement.

Acapulco, one of Mexico’s most famous beach resorts, was once a playground for Hollywood stars but in recent years has been roiled by vicious gang warfare. It is now ranked one of the most murderous cities in the world.

The past week has been particularly bloody in Mexico.

On Wednesday, at least 14 people were killed in a shootout in the northern state of Chihuahua, while 17 suspected gang members were shot dead by police late on Friday near Mazatlan in Guzman’s home state of Sinaloa.

Thursday’s fight is the worst outbreak of violence inside a Mexican prison since 49 people died early last year in a battle between members of the feared Zetas drug cartel and rivals at a prison in the northern industrial city of Monterrey.

(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Gabriel Stargardter and Dave Graham; Editing by Sandra Maler, Bill Trott and Paul Tait)

Mexican gunfight that killed 17 raises relatives’ fears of police executions

Joel Ernesto Soto, head of the Mazatlan municipal police, speaks during a news conference in Mazatlan, Mexico, July 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jesus Bustamante

By Lizbeth Diaz

MAZATLAN, Mexico (Reuters) – Relatives of 17 suspected gang members killed late last week by police in northwest Mexico fear a skewed death toll points to what has become a grimly regular complaint in recent years – summary executions by security forces.

The 17 men, who authorities said were armed with 24 guns, were killed by police near the coastal city of Mazatlan in the unruly state of Sinaloa on Friday night. Another two people died nearby in what appeared to be earlier, related shootings, the state attorney general’s office said.

None of the suspects in the gun battle were found wounded or arrested.

Genaro Robles, Sinaloa’s head of police, put the outcome down to his officers’ better training and said there was no use of excessive force or extrajudicial killing in the exchange. Five of the 11 police involved suffered gunshot wounds. None died.

However, for relatives of the dead, the events raised the suspicion they were victims of a heavy-handed response by security forces of the kind that has stained Mexico’s human rights record in recent years.

Three people told Reuters they believed their relatives were killed in cold blood. Two of them cited gunshot wounds they said they had seen in the backs of their loved ones as evidence.

“They murdered them,” said the sister of one of the dead men as she waited outside a funeral home in Mazatlan. She declined to give her name for fear of reprisals. “They didn’t have a chance. This wasn’t a gun battle like they say in the news.”

Local municipal police also rejected the allegation, though human rights officials are investigating possible abuses.

Drug smugglers have been scrapping for control of the state amid a power vacuum following the deportation of iconic Sinaloa-native, drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Police chief Robles said officers were alerted to two people injured behind a mall in the small town of Villa Union on Friday evening, and chased down the suspected assailants, sparking a gun battle on a road outside town.

Blood was visible on the road when Reuters visited the scene at the weekend.

Nightime footage posted on social media afterwards purporting to show victims of the event, showed bodies piled up in the back of pickup trucks, with more scattered along a road. Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the videos.

The nephew of one of the victims said his uncle had worked for a drug cartel and had been shot from behind. “When I saw my uncle’s body it had gunshots in the back,” said the man, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

One local policeman described the shootings as “butchery” and unlike another recent gun-battle he had seen. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

STATE PROBE

Miriam Hernandez of the Sinaloa state Commission for Human Rights said the organization had opened an investigation into whether the killings involved human rights abuses.

Joel Ernesto Soto, head of the municipal police in Mazatlan, whose men fought in the gun battle, said he welcomed the probe.

“They can come and ask and speak to us. We’ll be here waiting,” he said, referring to the commission. “This event was completely fortuitous; there was nothing untoward.”

In 2015, police executed nearly two dozen suspected gang members in an ambush near the western town of Tanhuato, the national human rights commission found. It was one of the worst abuses by security forces in a decade of drug violence.

That followed another notorious incident in 2014 when 22 suspected cartel henchmen were killed by soldiers in Tlatlaya, a town a couple of hours southwest of Mexico City. Many of the soldiers were later acquitted of murder.

Police killed 17 people for every officer lost in gun battles in 2014, a study by Mexico’s National Autonomous University found. Experts said that ratio was consistent with excessive use of force.

Violence has risen sharply in Sinaloa since kingpin Guzman was sent to the United States in January, as splits within his once-dominant Sinaloa Cartel and attacks from rival gangs fed a killing spree.

There were 619 murders in Sinaloa in the first five months of 2017, up more than 75 percent from the same period in 2016.

“Everything is disintegrating,” policeman Soto said.

The family members gathered outside the Mazatlan funeral home said the rising violence was making police more corrupt.

“These killings were dirty,” said the mother of one of the victims, who also declined to give her name. “This wasn’t a fight. It was something else, but what can you do?”

(Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Dave Graham and Lisa Shumaker)

Mexico opposition officials targeted by government spying: report

A Mexican flag is seen over the city of Tijuana, Mexico from San Ysidro, a district of San Diego, California, U.S., April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

By Michael O’Boyle

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Three senior opposition officials in Mexico, including a party leader, were targeted with spying software sold to governments to fight criminals and terrorists, according to a report by researchers at the University of Toronto.

The officials, who included conservative National Action Party (PAN) head Ricardo Anaya, received text messages linked to software known as Pegasus, which Israeli company NSO Group only sells to governments, the report by Citizen Lab said.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has asked the attorney general’s office to investigate charges that the government spied on private citizens, saying he wanted to get to the bottom of the accusations that he called “false.”

Last week, Citizen Lab, a group of researchers at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, identified 12 activists, human-rights lawyers and journalists who had also seen attempts to infect their phones with the powerful spyware.

John Scott-Railton, one of a group of researchers at Citizen Lab who have spent five years tracking the use of such spyware by governments against civilians, said Mexico’s case was notable for the number of targets and the intensity of efforts.

“What we have already provided, in our prior reporting, is strong circumstantial evidence implicating the government of Mexico,” he said.

Anaya, PAN Senator Roberto Gil Zuarth and Fernando Rodriguez, the PAN’s communications secretary, received infectious messages in June 2016, when lawmakers were discussing anti-corruption legislation, the report said.

The PAN officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, which was published on Citizen Lab’s website: http://bit.ly/2sl8UiH.

Pena Nieto’s office said in a statement that it “categorically refuses to allow any of its agencies to carry out surveillance or intervention of communications” except for fighting organized crime or national security threats, and only with court authorization.

Mexico’s government purchased about $80 million worth of spyware from NSO Group, according to a report by the New York Times last week.

The spying allegations have added to the problems facing Pena Nieto, whose popularity has waned due to rising violence and signs of widespread corruption.

Among the previous targets who Citizen Lab identified were Carmen Aristegui, a journalist who in 2014 helped reveal that Pena Nieto’s wife had acquired a house from a major government contractor, as well as lawyers representing the families of 43 students who disappeared and were apparently massacred in 2014.

At least nine of the people who were targeted filed charges with authorities on June 19. On June 22, Pena Nieto promised a thorough investigation and insisted that Mexico was a democracy that tolerated critical voices.

The president’s office said in its latest statement that any new allegations would be added to the current investigation.

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Frank Jack Daniel)

U.S. court hears challenge on Texas law to punish ‘sanctuary cities’

A protester against the Texas state law to punish "sanctuary cities" stands outside the U.S. Federal court in San Antonio, Texas,

By Jon Herskovitz and Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – A small border town and some of the largest cities in Texas will ask a federal judge on Monday to block a new state law to punish “sanctuary cities,” arguing it promotes racial profiling, diverts resources from police and is unconstitutional.

The Republican-backed law in Texas, the U.S. state with the longest border with Mexico, takes effect on Sept. 1. It is the first of its kind since Republican Donald Trump became president in January, promising to crack down on illegal immigration.

Luis Vera, an attorney for the League Of United Latin American Citizens, one of the numerous plaintiffs in the suit, said the bill was signed despite opposition from several police chiefs across Texas and the state’s large Latino population.

“No one in the history of the United States has ever attempted this in any state. That’s why the whole world is watching us right now,” Vera said in an interview.

The law known as Senate Bill 4 calls for jail time for police chiefs and sheriffs who fail to cooperate in U.S. immigration enforcement. The measure also allows police to ask about immigration status during a lawful detention.

Supporters have said immigrants who do not break the law have nothing to fear. Critics contend it allows police to detain people for up to 48 hours for immigration checks, even for minor infractions such as jaywalking.

“It is absurd, it is offensive, when people say sanctuary cities make us safe. They allow hardened criminals to hide in plain sight,” Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told reporters last week.

The hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio will be before Judge Orlando Garcia.

In a separate case this month, Garcia cast doubt on the legality of some Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer requests at the heart of the law, saying there are times when they can violate the U.S. Constitution.

A detainer is a request by immigration officials for a jurisdiction to continue to hold a person in custody, usually for no more than 48 hours, to check if they can be handed over to ICE for potential deportation.On Friday, The Trump administration filed court papers to support the Texas state law and is seeking to argue in court hearings in favor of the legislation it says will help keep America safe.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Jim Forsyth; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

OAS nations wind up empty handed on Venezuela condemnation

A banner is seen with a small group of Venezuelan protesters outside the site where the Organization of American States (OAS) 47th General Assembly is taking place in Cancun, Mexico June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

By Anthony Esposito

CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – The Organization of American States failed on Wednesday to issue a formal declaration condemning Venezuela’s government for its handling of the political and economic crisis in the South American country, despite a last-minute push by Mexico and the United States.

But member nations, including Mexico, committed to keep pressing the issue until the crisis in Venezuela, where at least 75 people have been killed in more than two months of protests, is peacefully resolved.

“Mexico’s position on Venezuela is a position that will not waver, it’s a position that says representative democracy is the only form of government acceptable in the Western Hemisphere,” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told reporters.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is accused by opponents of leading the OPEC member toward dictatorship by delaying elections, jailing opposition activists and pressing to overhaul the constitution.

Videgaray and OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro repeated calls for Venezuela to establish an election timetable, respect for human rights, political prisoners to be freed, an independent judiciary and respect for the autonomy of the legislature.

Foreign ministers from the 34-nation OAS bloc failed to agree on a resolution formally rebuking Venezuela after the issue of the crisis-racked nations consumed most of the three-day general assembly in Cancun, Mexico.

An effort by a group of nations, led by the United States, Mexico and regional allies, to include a declaration on Venezuela by tucking it into a more general resolution on human rights also failed.

Throughout the OAS sessions, Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez fought back at attempts to chastise her nation, accusing U.S. allies of being “lapdogs of imperialism.”

Rodriguez left her post as foreign minister on Wednesday to run for a seat in a controversial new congress, drawing praise from Maduro as a “tiger” for her feisty defense of the socialist government.

Twenty states voted to pass the draft resolution censuring Venezuela on Monday, falling short of the 23 votes, or two-thirds majority, needed.

Maduro accuses opponents of seeking his violent overthrow with U.S. support. He has called for the creation of a super-body, or constituent assembly, with powers to overhaul the constitution, in voting set for the end of July.

Four years of recession caused by failing socialist economic policies plus the decline in global oil prices have battered Venezuela’s 30 million people and made Maduro deeply unpopular.

Opposition leaders accuse Maduro of leading Venezuela toward dictatorship by delaying elections and jailing opposition activists, while food and medicine run short and inflation is believed to be in the triple digits.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Tom Brown and Lisa Shumaker)