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.

More than 500 National Guard troops began patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border this week. They are part of Operation Copper Cactus; it began in California earlier this month. The Operation intends to bolster border patrol forces and will eventually cover New Mexico and Texas border areas as well where unpiloted aerial drones will begin patrolling the skies Wednesday.

The introduction of unpiloted surveillance aircraft into South Texas airspace means the multi-million dollar machines will patrol the entire length of the US/Mexico border.

Drones have been in use over some rural sections of the border since 2004, but the Federal Aviation Administration had been cautious to approve their use in the civilian airspace over the urbanized Texas border given their high accident rate in comparison to piloted aircraft. One of the most common technical failures of drones – which are operated remotely from the ground – is a loss of communication between pilot and aircraft.

The Congressional Budget Office found the use of drones has “resulted in fewer alien apprehensions per flight hour than the use of manned aircraft.”

While crashes in remote rural areas are expensive, a major malfunction in an urban area could also potentially cause harm to local residents and property. Each Predator B drone costs 4.5 million dollars. The Customs and Border Protection Inspector General reports the cost of operating a drone is more than double that of a piloted aircraft.

The official who opened the investigation into the massacre of 72 Central and South Americans in northern Mexico has been found dead. Mexican marines found the investigator’s body dumped along a highway in the northern border state of Tamaulipas. A second body encountered at the scene is thought to be that of a municipal police official linked to the same case. The state’s attorney general reported the two as missing late Thursday.

The investigator’s disappearance and death illustrates why many high-level crimes in Mexico go unpunished. Cartel-related violence in Tamaulipas also frequently goes unreported for fear of retaliation. Early this morning, a car bomb exploded outside of the Ciudad Victoria office of the national broadcaster, Televisa, which has been covering the massacre.

Testimony by the massacre’s sole survivor indicates the murdered migrants had been kidnapped en route to the US by organized criminals. An average of more than 1600 migrants are kidnapped in Mexico each month according to data published by the country’s National Human Rights Commission.