NPR Praises Mexican Federal Police Checkpoints — Ignores Acts of Corruption, Cartels

A recent article by National Public Radio aimed at portraying Mexico’s immigration enforcement and checkpoints in a positive light overlooked allegations of corruption against Mexican federal agencies and did not speak with law enforcement officials.

In the article Mexico Deploys a Formidable Deportation Force Near Its Own Southern Border, NPR claims that Mexico is not lax when it comes to immigration enforcement. The story is aimed at criticizing the portrayal of Mexico’s lax immigration enforcement just weeks after a large scale caravan of Central American migrants was able to freely move from the southern part of Mexico to the U.S. border with Tijuana in order to request asylum. Some of the more than 1,500 migrants have requested asylum in Mexico.

“Rather than amassing troops on its border with Guatemala, Mexico stations migration agents, local and federal police, soldiers and marines to create a kind of containment zone in Chiapas state,” the NPR story claims. “With roving checkpoints and raids, Mexican migration agents have formed a formidable deportation force.”

Despite NPR’s glowing commentary for Mexican law enforcement and their effort to portray law enforcement’s effort as excessive, NPR admits that they did not speak with any law enforcement agency nor did they get any official statistics.

“Immigration, police and Interior Department officials did not respond to NPR’s interview requests.”

The story appears to be a response to a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump where he criticized the Mexican government for their initial inaction during the issue with the migrant caravan. 

Despite the “formidable” immigration force that NPR reported on, Breitbart Texas reported in February about how Tamaulipas state police officers raided a number of Gulf Cartel stash houses in the border city of Matamoros. Police rescued/detained more than 450 migrants who had made it all the way to Mexico’s northern border.

While NPR only reported from the state of Chiapas and spoke only with local residents, the story makes no mention of the almost regular cases of corruption that have surfaced in connection with Mexican federal law enforcement agencies and checkpoints. Last week, Breitbart Texas reported on a formal complaint filed by the State of Tamaulipas calling for an internal affairs investigation and federal charges against Mexican federal officers who helped a convoy of tractor trailers get past a checkpoint in that state. When state police officers tried to stop the convoy, the federal officials interfered pulling them over.

Earlier this year, Breitbart Texas reported on the arrest of a Mexican federal police intelligence unit that had been working for the Gulf Cartel in their fuel theft operations.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.

Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.