Armed militias hold migrants stuck on border, US and Mexico

Armed members of an extreme right-wing militia have in the past day on the border between Mexico and the United States large groups of undocumented migrants, detained and transferred to the border police. Burgerrechtenbewegingen call that a ‘flagrant violation of the law’.

Members of the armed militia, calling themselves the United Constitutional Patriots calls placed over the past few days own videos and photos online showing how migrants are detained and handed over to the authorities. For example, on one of the videos a group of up to two hundred immigrants, to see that standing was held near the location Sunland Park, New Mexico.

When the images are placed facebook users comments about the migrants, such as that ” many of them name brand clothing wear’ or ‘clear enough to eat have had’.

It is not the first time that vigilantes patrolling the border area between the United States and Mexico, notes The New York Times . But that is now also armed groups ‘hunting’ on undocumented migrants, which, according to U.s. law, have the right to apply for asylum, creates tensions with human rights defenders.

‘Armed racists’

So said civil rights movement American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday in an open letter that the armed militias ‘have no right to migrants to arrest’. They urged the public prosecutor, and governor of New Mexico to a criminal investigation to the United Constitutional Patriots. “We cannot allow racist and armed people who have the law in their own hands, names, asylum seekers, kidnap and imprison’, it sounds in the letter.

In a statement confirming the public prosecutor of New Mexico, Hector Balderas, that the armed groups do not have the right an authority to exercise those reserved to the police.’ The governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, says in a statement that ” ordinary citizens absolutely do not have the right of migrants to harass or threaten you, in any form whatsoever’.

To limes wall, there is

“We want only the border police support, and the wide world to show what happens at our border,” said Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots, in an interview with The New York Times. In her own words-is the organization planning to go to the promised limes wall, from president Donald Trump’. Benvie: ‘If the migrants that we stop to listen to us, we keep them fixed to the border police on the spot. It is not yet reported that agents asked us our activities to cease.’

Since the beginning of the spring to try again more families, mostly from Central American countries through Mexico to reach the United States. Only all took place in march Us authorities more than negentigduizend migrants. Many migrants are venturing quickly to the crossing for the beginning of summer, and the heat in the border area unbearable heights reached.

The New York Times asked also a reaction to a spokesman of the Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency including the border police. Who, however, refused to comment on the activities of the United Constitutional Patriots, but said, however, that ‘individuals cannot be sustained the law in their own hands’.