Migration and Human Rights
President Fox took office in December after a campaign in which he promised to promote a strong human rights agenda. Since then, he and his foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, have made it clear that a central part of that agenda would be promoting the rights of Mexican migrants in the United States. At a recent press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Castañeda described the treatment of Mexicans in the United States as "intolerable."

U.S. Border Patrol Abuses: Over the last decade, Human Rights Watch has published several reports documenting abuses committed by the U.S. Border Patrol, including beatings and sexual assaults. There have also been several cases of border-crossers being shot by agents, with the agents often claiming later that the border was throwing, or reaching for, a rock. Last May, for example, agents shot a man in the leg even though he was on the Mexican side of the border. They claimed the man threw a rock in their direction.

Human Rights Watch has also documented how the U.S. government often fails to investigate and punish abuses by U.S. border agents. The dramatic growth in the size of the Border Patrol in recent years has only exacerbated the problem of effective oversight. Officials from the Office of the Inspector General have complained of severe understaffing that makes it impossible for them to investigate all the complaints they receive of border abuses.

Questions for President Bush:

· How do you propose to address the problem of Border Patrol abuses?

· Do you think the budget of the Office of the Inspector General should be increased to enable it to fully investigate allegations of abuses by Border Patrol agents?

Questions for Bush:

What specific steps do you believe the INS and local law enforcement officials should take to address these attacks and increasing tensions between ranchers and border-crossers?

· What specific steps do you plan to take to protect the lives and safety of border-crossers?

Questions for Bush:

· Is the U.S. concerned that alleged violations of the Vienna Convention in death penalty cases will place Americans arrested abroad at greater risk?

· Would you issue a moratorium on executing individuals whose rights under the treaty were violated?

Many migrant children, both documented and undocumented, also labor in the U.S. agricultural sector, working long days, suffering injuries and exposure to pesticides, and often earning less than minimum wage. U.S. law gives child farm workers less protection than youth working in safer occupations, and the U.S. government fails to enforce adequately the existing minimum age, wage and hour, and health and safety protections. [See "Fingers to the Bone: United States Failure to Protect Child Farmworkers."]

Questions for Bush:

· Will you insist that any legislation creating temporary employment visas, including H-2A agricultural worker visas, allow workers to change employers within the same labor sector if their rights are violated?

Will you take steps to prohibit the INS from interfering with workers' right to form unions?

· What measures will you take to make sure that child farm workers receive the same basic legal protections all other child workers receive in the U.S.?

More than seven years later, the mechanisms established by the side accord to protect labor rights have proven weak and, for the most part, ineffective. The offices that review alleged violations often fail to render findings or even address issues raised in the complaints brought before them. Though the offices may recommend consultations between labor departments from the two countries, these consultations have rarely produced concrete results. When, for example, U.S. officials found widespread pregnancy-based discrimination in Mexico's maquila factories, the consultation between representatives of the two governments produced only an agreement to sponsor public outreach sessions, without requiring the Mexican government to end the practice. Today Mexican maquilas continue to conduct illegal pregnancy testing without government sanctions. [See "A Job or Your Rights: Continued Sex Discrimination in Mexico's Maquiladora Sector."

Questions for Presidents Fox and Bush:

· Are you satisfied with the results of NAFTA's labor side accord?

· What specific steps will you take to improve its implementation?

· Will the Mexican and U.S. governments only agree enter into free trade agreement that include effective labor rights protections and the possibility of sanctions for their violations?

Abusive Law Enforcement in Mexico: Arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention, torture, and extrajudicial executions of alleged criminals are common practices in Mexico today. [See "Systemic Injustice: Torture, "Disappearance," and Extrajudicial Execution in Mexico." The willingness of Mexican courts to use evidence gained through torture, in violation of the Convention Against Torture, encourages unlawful practices against persons in detention. The increasing involvement of the Mexican military in fighting the drug war is likely to increase the number of abuses-in part because soldiers are trained and equipped for warfare more than for policing, and in part because they are not subject to prosecution in civilian courts for the crimes they commit against civilians. Abuses committed by army personnel can only be prosecuted in military courts-and these courts have generally failed to investigate and prosecute violations adequately in the past.

The case of environmental activists Teodoro Cabrera García and Rodolfo Montiel Flores illustrates the problem. Soldiers detained the two men in Guerrero state in May 1999, killing another man at the time. The men were held illegally for two days and forced, under torture, to sign statements confessing to drug-related offenses. Last August, they were convicted and sentenced to prison on the basis of those confessions, as well as evidence that, according to the government's National Human Rights Commission, had been planted by the military. The two remain in prison today, and no action has been taken against the soldiers involved in their detention and torture.

Questions for Fox:

· What steps will you take to make sure that evidence obtained through torture and other human rights abuses is not admissible evidence in court?

· What steps will you take to make sure that abuses committed by the military are adequately investigated and prosecuted?