Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Cruz: Pay for wall with El Chapo’s assets

Does Ted Cruz read Prairie Pundit?

Back in February PP posted,

The government is trying to seize the assets of el Chapo estimated to be $14 billion. That is nearly two-thirds of the price of the wall right there. Mexico should go along with this because it would defund the criminal insurgency that is killing their culture. It would have the potential of being a win-win deal.

Now Sen. Cruz Introduces the EL CHAPO Act. BILL RESERVES BILLIONS IN POTENTIAL ASSETS FORFEITED AS A RESULT OF THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF JOAQUIN ARCHIVALDO GUZMAN LOREA “EL CHAPO” AND OTHER DRUG LORDS TO PAY FOR BORDER SECURITY

The U.S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering.

“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” said Sen. Cruz.

Cruz tweeted,

Not only El Chapo’s assets but also those of his associates,

One cooperator, Juan Carlos Ramirez-Abadia, or “Chupeta,” 54, was a leading supplier of cocaine to Sinaloa and BLO through Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel. He directed the production of business ledgers and was also prosecuted by Goldbarg. DEA agents helped obtain “the forfeiture of hundreds of millions of dollars” of Ramirez-Abadia’s purported billion-dollar fortune, U.S. authorities said when he was extradited in 2008 and remains under U.S. indictment.
. . .
Mayo’s son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, 41, agreed not to contest the forfeiture of nearly $1.4 billion — including cash, real estate, businesses, vehicles and other property — and cooperate with U.S. authorities while pending sentencing of 10 years to life in prison, a federal plea deal made public in 2014 in Chicago showed.

And then there are his relatives, who are living high off the hog.

Back in 2012 the U.S. Treasury Department put financial sanctions on El Chapo’s wife and son

The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said that it had designated María Alejandrina Salazar Hernández and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, 26, under the U.S. Kingpin Act, which bars American citizens from dealing with them, and allows authorities to freeze their assets in the U.S.

Forbes looked into the assets amount last January (emphasis added),

The 33-page indictment against El Chapo, filed in 2016 at the U.S. Eastern District of New York, does not dissect the $14 billion. It simply says that upon conviction, the U.S. will seek forfeiture of any property or contractual rights derived from the continuing criminal enterprise, “including but not limited to at least approximately a sum of money equal to $14 billion in United States currency.”
. . .
In February 2014, OFAC issued a chart identifying 288 companies involved in Guzmán’s money laundering operations that had been blacklisted by OFAC between 2007 and 2014. The Guzman-linked companies, mostly located in Mexico, covered a broad range of areas including real estate, gas stations, construction and trucking companies, and furniture stores. Under the so-called “Kingpin Act,” American companies and individuals are prohibited from doing business with foreign company flagged by OFAC.

Gaddis said that the hard facts that back up the government’s assertion of the $14 billion figure lay in the reporting of DEA files, but they will only be accessible when they are made available to Guzman’s defense as discovery material during pre-trial proceedings.

Even half that amount would help.

Over in Mexico, a PAN congressman claims the assets  total US$161billion and belong to Mexico,

On Wednesday Congressman Jorge Ramos Hernández, from the National Action Party (PAN), claimed Guzman’s fortune amounts to at least $16 billion and must be ceded to Mexico to restore the damages caused by the trafficker’s illicit activities.

Related:
Via JC, Senator Ted Cruz proposes the El Chapo Act, enabling 14 billion dollars worth of assets from El Chapo and other drug lords to fund the border wall

UPDATE
Linked to by Silvio Canto. Thank you!

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Trump does Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador a favor

Monica Showalter explains how (emphasis added),

But the bigger favor is the one he’s done for Central America, particularly the “northern triangle” states of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.  Those nations, plus Mexico, in varying degrees, are in a demographic death spiral, losing too many people in prime working years they cannot afford to lose.  Their window of development is getting narrow, a UCLA professor of economics explained to me.  The statistics here show that by 2025, the fertility rate will be just 2.08% for the region as a whole, which is at or below replacement rate.  The years following will be below replacement rate.  Immigration, which primarily involves young people in their prime working years, has been a disaster for those countries, as has been their government’s dependence on remittances.  There is not just a negative effect of dollars coming in to displace local productivity; there is also a social cost as families are broken up by migration.  In fact, the IMF has pointed out that remittances tend to keep a country artificially underdeveloped.  The money itself tends to benefit government cronies and make corruption less costly.

So let’s not kid ourselves as to what has happened.  Trump’s statements and tweets have spared Americans billions in costs associated with illegal immigrants.  But they have spared Central Americans the near fatal cost of unchecked emigration.

Just the other day I posted on how Mexico is spending US$50million on legal aid for immigrants to fight deportation in the U.S., since the country makes more money from Mexicans who leave the country than from those who stay.

Plus immigration is a useful pressure valve for the discontent.

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Mexico: $50 million to fight deportation, $39 million for flat-screen tvs

Mexico’s mismanagement is one of the reasons why Pres. Peña Nieto is so unpopular:

Mexico’s congressional audit office has ruled that a controversial government program to give away some 10 million flat-screen TV sets to the poor wasted an estimated $39 million of taxpayers’ money.

The audit found that some 339,000 of the televisions in President Enrique Peña Nieto’s nearly $1-billion program were defective. The subsidy program was aimed at helping the poor during the country’s 2015 switch from analog to digital signals for television.

Around 12,200 television sets are missing altogether

Mexico’s congressional audit office estimates that $39 billion was wasted.

Mexico is turning more to the left, spilling raw sewage on California’s beaches, and its largest source of revenue is remittances totaling US$29 billion, outpacing petroleum exports (US$18.7 billion) and revenue from foreign visitors (US$17.4 billion).

95% of remittances come from the United States.

No wonder the Mexican government wants to keep the remittances coming. They made a video: “How to prepare in case you are detained for immigration [violations]

The first item is (my translation):

“01 HAVE AN EMERGENCY PLAN
take care of your family,, especially underage children. If they were born in the US, go to the nearest consulate and register them as Mexicans.”

The US$50 million campaign will

hire lawyers for migrants facing deportation in the United States.

The money will also go to outreach programs “to promote respect for Mexicans’ rights.”

Think of the program as a business expense for the Mexican government, which gets more money from those who leave than from those who stay.

Then there’s the US Tax code. According to IRS Publication 501, Table 5,

The provision allows the U.S. taxpayer to claim an exemption and deduct $4,050 from taxable income for such relatives living in Mexico, so long as the relative’s gross income is less than $4,050 per year, and the U.S. taxpayer taking the exemption provides more than half the person’s total support for the year.

Parting question,

Who verifies that the claimed exemptions are legit?

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Miami judge overturns mayor’s order

Judge Hirsch found it unconstitutional, and calls the U.S. “a sanctuary coountry.”

Judge shoots down Miami-Dade deportation policy adopted to follow Trump immigration order

The judge’s ruling was a rebuke of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s much criticized decision to allow county jails to hold immigrants awaiting deportation by federal agents, a measure that has sparked protests and anger by many immigration advocates in South Florida

Money quote,

“Miami is not, and has never been, a sanctuary city,” Hirsch wrote. “But America is, and has always been, a sanctuary country.”

The Feds have 48 hours to pick up inmates held in the Miami-County jail.

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Mexico: Two policemen arrested for kidnapping migrants

As I have repeatedly posted over the years, migrants from other countries traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. are frequently vulnerable to kidnapping.

This time the cops were the kidnappers:

Two agents from a special police unit known as Fuerza Coahuila have been arrested for the alleged kidnapping and extortion of a family of Central American migrants who were trying to get to Texas.
The police officers are accused of kidnapping and extorting the family by making promises of crossing them to Texas after a ransom was paid off. The agents had locked up the family at a stash house in this border city.

Sources within the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office (PGJE) confirmed to Breitbart Texas that this week that members of the PGJE Investigative Police Unit carried out a raid at the stash house where the Fuerza Coahuila members had allegedly been holding the family. The operation was kicked off after a Central American woman contacted authorities about the kidnapping of her family, The PGJE investigators arrested the two Fuerza Coahuila officers at the stash house.

Additionally, Mexico Says It Won’t House Non-Mexicans Pending Outcome of Asylum Cases in US

Mexico’s government said on Friday it would not allow the United States to send undocumented migrants of other nationalities back to Mexico to await the outcome of their asylum proceedings in the US.

Many of the undocumented migrants trying to make their way to the US are Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands. After making a trek fraught with danger through Mexico, they often request asylum once they reach US soil.

Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray asserted last week that We’ll Go to the U.N. to Defend ‘Human Rights’ of Mexicans in U.S..

Never mind the dismal state of the human rights of foreigners in Mexico; Videgaray would be well advised to look into the state of human rights of his fellow Mexicans. According to Human Rights Watch,

During the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican security forces have been implicated in repeated, serious human rights violations—including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture—in the course of efforts to combat organized crime. The government has made little progress in prosecuting those responsible for recent abuses, let alone the large number of abuses committed by soldiers and police since former President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) initiated Mexico’s “war on drugs.”

HRW’s report touches on (click on link)

  1. Enforced Disappearances
  2. Extrajudicial Executions
  3. Military Abuses and Impunity
  4. Torture
  5. Criminal Justice System
  6. Self-Defense Groups
  7. Attacks on Journalists and Human Rights Defenders
  8. Women’s and Girls’ Rights
  9. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
  10. Palliative Care
  11. Disability Rights
  12. Key International Actors



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Mexico: Ryan goes to US-Mex border UPDATED with livefeed of Tillerson press conference

House Speaker Paul Ryan is at the border; the WaPo reports,
Ryan makes trip to U.S.-Mexico border as lawmakers mull building Trump’s wall

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan led a delegation of House Republicans on a six-hour tour of the U.S.-Mexico border Wednesday, seeing firsthand by helicopter, horse and boat the security challenges of keeping out undocumented immigrants President Trump wants to block with a costly wall.

Ryan (R-Wis.), on his first trip to the border, said in a statement afterward that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the ground need “more tools and more support . . . for them to do their jobs effectively.” He said Congress “is committed to securing the border and enforcing our laws” and pledged cooperation with the Trump administration.

Sec. of State Rex Tillerson is in Mexico. The Mexicans are not exactly thrilled

“I want to make it emphatically clear that neither Mexico’s government or the Mexican people have any reason to accept provisions that have been unilaterally imposed by one government on the other,” Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said at a ceremony on Wednesday.

“We won’t accept it because we don’t have to,” he added, in an apparent reference to U.S. plans to return illegal migrants to Mexico, regardless of their nationality.

Videgaray doesn’t seem to remember how Mexico treated Andrew Tahmooressi.

If Videgaray’s name sounds familiar, he’s the guy who quit as Finance Minister after the Peña Nieto-Trump press conference didn’t work the way he expected.

UPDATE
Livefeed of Tillerson press conference in Mexico

[Read more…]

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Mexico: Stranded Cubans held at detention centers

Carlos Eire notices that there’s No outcry or protests over Cuban migrants excluded from U.S. by Obama.

Obama’s abrupt cancellation of the refugee status granted to Cubans under the “Wet foot – Dry foot” policy established in the 90’s has left a large number of Cubans stranded in Mexico and other countries.

Those stranded in Mexico find themselves trapped in a dangerous limbo, in which they are prey to criminals and in constant danger of extortion, kidnapping, and all other sorts of abuse.

U.S.-bound Cubans stranded in Mexico say they are victims of extortion and more (emphasis added)

The telephones at the Siglo XXI used for international calls are public so it is unclear how numbers dialed can be extracted. But at least three relatives of different migrants interviewed said they had received similar calls in which alleged officials asked them for money in exchange for their relatives’ freedom. None of the three agreed to pay and the exchange did not go long enough to discuss specific dollar figures.
. . .
An official of the INM confirmed to el Nuevo Herald on Monday that there are 90 Cubans detained at the Siglo XXI. Of these, 59 requested protection before a judge and 23 sought refuge from the Mexican authorities. The remaining eight are awaiting a decision of the Cuban Embassy in that country. If Havana deems the Cubans as citizens, they must be deported according to the migratory agreements between both nations.

Asked about the alleged disappearance of three migrants from the detention center — identified as Armando Daniel Tejeda, Daniel Benet Báez and Yosvany Leyva Velázquez — the Mexican immigration official said the trio escaped and therefore were not considered “missing.”

“Two of them had sought refuge and one had a hearing scheduled before a judge,” the official said. “They all fled and the corresponding authorities were informed.”

Other migrants at Siglo XXI, who realized the three were missing and got no answers on their whereabouts, launched a short-lived protest inside the facility that was violently silenced by authorities, migrants said.

Meanwhile, Jorge Castañeda tried to filibuster Tucker Carlson last night on immigration,

Castañeda did not do well,

Related:
The truth about deportations

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