The "Brothers on the Road" shelter in Ciudad Ixtepec, Oaxaca

[Transcript and audio of a report produced for The World]

ANCHOR: Many undocumented migrants from Central America travel through Mexico on their way to the United States. It’s a perilous journey. The migrants face lots of dangers, from exposure to the elements to murder. And now Mexico’s drug cartels have gotten involved. They control the smuggling routes for profit and they often kidnap the migrants and force them into work. About the only protection migrants can count on is that offered by shelters. The shelters offer services such as free meals and a safe place to sleep, but these shelters themselves have become targets. Shannon Young reports.

REPORTER: A recent incident in the southern Mexican city of Tenosique illustrates just how brazen criminals have become in targeting migrant shelters. A staffer at the “La 72″ shelter received an anonymous tip that the shelter would be the target of a mass kidnapping. And indeed, in the early hours of July 6th, men pulled up to the shelter in three vehicles and tried to force their way in. Migrants fled over the back wall.

The incident occured shortly after the shelter’s coordinator, Friar Tomas González and other religious figures, had met with the top United Nations human rights official – precisely to speak about the dangers facing migrants and those who defend them.

(Friar González speaks, reporter interprets)

Friar González says in addition to providing food and water, the shelters also document human rights violations suffered by migrants. That

invites intimidation or retribution from those who abuse the migrants, which González says includes both immigration authorities and organized criminals.

“La 72″ in Tenosique isn’t the only shelter that’s been targeted. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission recently documented threats or security breeches at five other facilities. Among them is the “Casa Belén” shelter in the northern city of Saltillo, which was granted a protection order last year from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Casa Belén coordinator, Father Pedro Pantoja says the government has stood idly by as the attacks have intensified.

PEDRO PANTOJA (voiceover): “Organized criminals have come inside our migrant shelter. Despite the protection order, there were no police patrol cars outside. We see that not only as incompetence, but disdain. The authorities couldn’t care less about the disaster, the cruelty to which these people are subjected. They are completely invisible as victims. Even more invisible are those who victimize. And in all of this, there’s not only silence, but also zero action and a total lack of respect for the lives of these people.”

Two European volunteers had to abandon the Saltillo shelter last month after an act of intimidation by men who identified themselves as members of the Zetas cartel. A shelter in the border city of Nuevo Laredo closed its doors in late June citing threats and a lack of security guarantees.

The rails where migrants wait to catch a freight train

(Roll Solalinde tape – reporter interprets)

Father Alejandro Solalinde – who runs a shelter in Ciudad Ixtepec, Oaxaca – says profit is the motive behind many of the attacks against the shelters. He says the drug cartels would love to see the shelters disappear because they hinder the criminals’ ability to make money by controlling the migrant routes. The most notorious hallmark of this cartel expansion is the mass kidnapping of migrants.

Mexico’s Human Rights Commission says more than 20 thousand migrants are kidnapped each year in Mexico, generating upwards of 50 million dollars in ransom revenues. Father Solalinde has himself received multiple threats, but seems unfazed in his work.

(roll Solalinde tape, reporter interprets)

He says despite the dangers, his life is in God’s hands. He adds that’s he’s well aware that he can be killed at any moment, but that the work will go on with or without him because it’s part of God’s plan – a plan he’s willing to carry out whatever the consequence.

In a country where dozens of human rights activists have been killed over the last five years, it takes a special kind of conviction to continue the dangerous work of protecting migrants, one of the most vulnerable – and transitory – groups in Mexico.

The Department of Justice has issued new rules regarding the sale of multiple semi-automatic firearms in the four states that share a border with Mexico. The new policy takes effect immediately. It requires licensed firearms dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to report multiple sales of certain types of firearms within a period of 5 business days.

The guns that would trigger a report are semi-automatic rifles greater than .22 caliber that accept detachable magazines.

These types of rifles are favored by criminal organizations that have been battling each other and authorities in Mexico’s ongoing drug war. The rationale behind the new rule is that it will allow ATF field agents to identify possible straw-purchasers; people who buy weapons legally but then pass them on to criminals.

The order comes as the scandal over the ATF’s “Fast and Furious” program seems poised to expand to other federal agencies.

The new rule apparently does not require reporting the large scale purchase of high-caliber ammunition – nor does it close the so-called “gun show loophole” which permits the unregulated sale and purchase of firearms by individuals at gun shows.

The National Rifle Association has already promised it will sue to block the rule.

New information emerging from investigations into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s “Fast and Furious” program indicate the top gun trafficking suspects may have been paid informants for other government agencies.

The pretense of the “Fast and Furious” program was to allow straw purchases of weapons, track the guns, and identify the higher-ups supplying them to crime syndicates in Mexico. Whistle-blowing field agents have come forward saying they were ordered not to intervene at moments they thought were critical in preventing future crimes. Since then, several guns traced to the program have been linked to crimes in both the United States and Mexico.

The controversy has sparked calls for the resignation of ATF Director Kenneth Melson. But – according to testimony given by Melson in private to Congressional investigators – the inquires should look beyond the ATF.

A letter sent this week to Attorney General Eric Holder by Congress members Darrel Issa and Charles Grassley outlined some of the key points of the meeting with the ATF director. The Congress members wrote they have “very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking ‘higher-ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants”. They also stated the evidence they collected “raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities”.

The agencies named in the letter are the FBI and the DEA. Both are agencies that, like ATF, fall under the umbrella of the Department of Justice; a body the congressional investigators say has been less than forthcoming with information.

The widow of guerilla leader Lucio Cabañas was shot dead yesterday (July 3rd) along with her sister in the community of Xaltianguis in the state of Guerrero.

According to a police report, Isabel Anaya Nava and her older sister Reyna were gunned down at approximately 1pm on Sunday while leaving a church where they were selling food. Armed men opened fire on the sisters and then stole their cellular phones before fleeing in a blue vehicle.

Micaela Cabañas Anaya, the daughter of Isabel Anaya Nava and Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, received a threat via phone at 5pm from her murdered mother’s cellular number. Micaela Cabañas is part a group known as “Nacidos en la Tempestad“, an organization of children of people killed or disappeared during Mexico’s “Dirty War” against leftists in the 1960s and ’70s.

After Lucio Cabañas died in a military action in Guerrero’s mountains in late 1974, his teenage wife and newborn daughter were “disappeared” and held in Mexico’s military base Number One, along with members of the Cabañas family. They were released in mid-1976.

Micaela Cabañas wrote in an article that she and her mother only told those close to them of their relation to the famous guerilla leader who founded the “Partido de los Pobres”.

Two of Isabel Anaya’s sisters were killed in early 2011. Human rights groups warn that the theft of Isabel and Reyna Anaya’s telephones indicate their contacts may now be at risk.

Guerrero is one of Mexico’s poorest states. Decades of counter-insurgency against leftist campesino groups has dovetailed with a more recent explosion of drug war-related violence.