El Paso, Texas, Feb 8 (EFE).- U.S. authorities have granted four asylum requests from Mexicans over the past 12 months, an impressive figure considering the near impossibility of such petitions being approved prior to 2010, activists and immigration lawyers in El Paso say.
In July 2010, the United States granted the first asylum application from a media professional since Mexican President Felipe Calderon militarized the struggle against the nation's powerful drug cartels in late 2006.
That protection was afforded to Jorge Luis Aguirre, an editor of the online newspaper La Polaka who denounced death threats in Ciudad Juarez - just across the border from El Paso - from Chihuahua state government officials.
El Paso-based immigration attorney Carlos Spector says the most recent successful Mexican asylum request was that of activist Saul Reyes Salazar, 46, whose application was approved in late January.
Reyes Salazar, who had denounced death threats targeting him and the rest of his family, currently is speaking out at U.S. universities and forums about the violence and lack of safety guarantees for activists south of the border.
He has joined a movement - Mexicans in Exile - that is striving to create awareness of the rights abuses and the need for Washington to pressure Mexico to rein in its army.
According to international rights organizations such as New York-based Human Rights Watch, Calderon's war on drug cartels has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings, torture, and other appalling abuses by security forces.
"I'm very grateful to the United States for receiving and protecting my son Saul, one of four children I have left, because they murdered six in Juarez," Sara Salazar, Reyes Salazar's mother, told Efe.
Salazar, 76, who attended an event this week in El Paso to mark the first anniversary of the slayings of two of her children and her daughter-in-law, said other surviving family members will not spend their days mourning but rather demanding justice from Mexican authorities.
"We're bringing attention to the situation in Mexico so that both ordinary (U.S.) citizens and immigration authorities and the courts understand that the horror movie in Mexico is real and the asylum applicants are really seeking that status to save their lives," Spector told Efe.
"It's no coincidence that murders of human rights activists and asylum petitions have risen since the Mexican army arrived in Juarez in 2008," the attorney added.
Ciudad Juarez, a coveted drug-smuggling corridor that is being fought over by the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels with backing from enforcers from local street gangs, is considered Mexico's murder capital.
The northern state of Chihuahua, where Juarez is located, has accounted for about 30 percent of the approximately 50,000 murders committed in Mexico since Calderon adopted the militarization strategy after taking office in December 2006.
Other recent successful asylum applications include that of Cipriana Jurado, a defender of the rights of workers at Ciudad Juarez's "maquiladoras," or export-oriented assembly plants, who obtained that status in June 2011.
Her petition was approved on the basis of evidence that Mexican army soldiers had harassed her after she had sought justice for a family that had suffered the disappearance of three of its members.
Another recipient of political asylum last year was Monica Arias, daughter-in-law of fellow activist Marisela Escobedo, who was killed in December 2010 while protesting outside the Chihuahua state government offices to demand justice for her daughter, Rubi Frayre, slain in 2008.
U.S. authorities also granted asylum in 2011 to a television cameraman who worked for Televisa in the northern state of Coahuila, Alejandro Hernandez. The media professional had fled Mexico after being kidnapped in July 2010 along with three co-workers.
Spector said his office is handling 50 more asylum cases involving Mexican business leaders, police officers, politicians and other activists such as Marisela Ortiz, co-founder of a group that provides assistance to the families of women murdered in Ciudad Juarez.
Another founder of that same group, Norma Andrade, is recovering from a stabbing in Mexico City and is considering fleeing the country.
