Dying for a Green Card
Why does the US force legal immigrants to get their visas in Juárez, Mexico's murder capital?
Monica Bosquez managed to "stay positive" most of the time. But in our conversation just days before she left for Ciudad Juárez, the bright and friendly program analyst for the state of Texas broke into tears. "If I don't come back," she said, "make sure you tell people what happened."
For the thousands of American citizens who, like Bosquez, are married to Mexican nationals working their way through the legal immigration process, all roads go through Juárez. That's because the United States consulate there is the only one in Mexico that handles immigrant visas—the documents that allows a foreigner to live in the US while awaiting permanent legal residency.
The sprawling compound—it's the largest consulate facility in the world—is located in an upscale neighborhood known as zona dorada, the golden zone. It looks like Anytown, USA. Walk a block and you can choose between Starbucks, McDonald's, Wendy's, and Denny's. A bit further southwest and you're at a new mall anchored by a Sears, boasting a cineplex with an IMAX® theater and a Total Fitness gym complete with a climbing wall.
But this sense of normalcy is an illusion. The $66 million fortress of a consulate is surrounded by a moat of heavily armed men, who guard it against an almost unimaginably brutal civil war raging just outside the golden zone. Ciudad Juárez, population 1.3 million, is sometimes called the "murder capital of the Americas"—a fitting description for a city that has seen roughly 7,000 killings in less than three years, including more than 3,100 last year.
Located just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, Juárez is ground zero in a bloody clash between the Mexican government and the drug cartels that feed Americans' craving for cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. The "narco-war" includes turf battles between rival cartels. Since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderón launched a military offensive against the cartels, officials put the national death toll at more than 30,000.
An internal Department of Homeland Security assessment notes that one of the cartels "has used terror tactics generally seen in Iraq and Afghanistan—mass video-recorded decapitations, targeting of civilians…to instill fear among rivals, law enforcement and the general public." One Mexican human-rights worker interviewed by London's Guardian newspaper summed up the Juárez situation as "martial law, without the law."
The violence in northern Mexico is worse than officials from either country will publicly admit, but a recently leaked State Department cable indicates that both sides understand the stakes. At a September 2009 meeting in Mexico City, that country's undersecretary for governance, Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernández, warned a US delegation that Mexico was in danger of "losing" entire regions like Juárez to the cartels.
In 2009, more than 94,000 Mexicans came to Juárez to apply for permanent resident status. Many, like Monica's husband Alvaro, were undocumented and living gainfully in the United States. In past decades, applying would have been no big deal for such people. Thanks partly to
Monica Bosquez and her husband Alvaro a 1965 Great Society law that emphasized the need to keep families intact, applicants already living in the United States could petition for a change of status without having to leave.
But over the years, foes of illegal immigration have chipped away at the policies to the point where keeping families together is no longer a key consideration. Since 2001, undocumented foreigners living here for a year or more have been instructed to return to their native countries, where they must then wait a decade before becoming eligible to apply for a change in status. (Applicants may request a waiver of the 10-year waiting period, but may do so only after leaving the country.)
Immigrant visas were once processed at all nine US consulates in Mexico, but in 1988, the task was consolidated to two consulates, in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana. In 1992, the Tijuana unit was closed. One State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me that the consolidation was a purely administrative move, and applies to "all countries where we have more than one consulate, except where there are regional language differences."
On immigration-related websites like the Juarez, Mexico Discussion Forum and Immigrate2US, members often speculate as to why, of all of the cities in Mexico, they are forced to go to the Murder Capital. Some see it as a deliberate move to discourage people from applying. "This process is built to break one down," wrote a member of the Juárez forum. "And most importantly, to instill fear."
State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson dismisses this claim. "The decision was made years ago," she told me, "before the increased drug-related violence along the border area." But the decision still stands now that the city is a war zone. A different spokeswoman, for the Juárez consulate, insisted that the golden zone is "relatively safe." Besides, she explained, "Visa applicants are not the targets. The war is between the cartels and gangs."
When I run that notion by Martín Orquiz, a reporter for the Juárez newspaper El Diario, he replies that it's generally true, but that many of the victims have been bystanders. "They were killed," he said, "because they passed by where a shooting occurred." He confirms that the area around the consulate is "relatively safe."
To reach that safe zone, though, applicants must pass through sections of town that regularly see mass killings, through armed security checkpoints, and near the site of a car-bomb explosion that killed three people in July. "The quality of the neighborhood around the compound doesn't much change the whole business of getting into and out of the city," one visa applicant told me. "The scariest part of our trip was the ride from the airport to the consulate, then back again." Especially, he explained, when his bus was suddenly behind a military truck filled with armed soldiers wearing black balaclavas.
The consulate's website is vague on the safety issue. Under "Frequently Asked Questions," it asks: "Is it safe for my family and I to travel to Ciudad Juárez given the recent reports of violence?"
The answer: "All immigrant visa cases in Mexico are currently processed at the U.S. Consulate General in Ciudad Juarez. Therefore all applicants must present themselves at the Consulate at the time and date of their appointment if they wish to proceed with their cases. It is incumbent upon you to take the necessary precautions when traveling to your visa appointment."
The State Department, meanwhile, urges US citizens to "defer unnecessary travel" to Juárez because of the violence: "DTOs (drug-trafficking organizations) have erected unauthorized checkpoints, and killed motorists who have not stopped at them…. Ciudad Juarez is of special concern.... In confrontations with the Mexican army and police, DTOs have employed automatic weapons and grenades. In some cases, assailants have worn full or partial police or military uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles…. Innocent bystanders have been killed in shootouts between DTOs and Mexican law enforcement or between rival DTOs…. U.S. citizens should be aware that many cases of violent crime are never resolved by Mexican law enforcement, and the U.S. government has no authority to investigate crimes committed in Mexico." And so on.
"The websites say stay away, don't travel there," one woman complained to me. "But for families who are trying to do the right, legal, thing and go through the immigration process, they do not give us any other option."
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