April 30 - May 6, 2008 Edition
Mexico following in Al Qaeda’s footsteps
Isabel Garcia – Pima County Legal Defender and Mexican operative
By Linda Bentley
Part I
TUCSON – After running across a Fox News article from March 18, 2004,
titled, “Is Mexico thwarting U.S. Immigration Enforcement?” looking back over
the past four years, things may be worse than its author Matt Hayes thought.
The article begins, “Most people know that Osama bin Laden’s terror group,
Al Qaeda (Arabic for ‘the base’), derives its name from the Mujahideen database
that bin Laden developed through the 1980s and 1990s. Using ‘the base,’ bin
Laden could call on a corps of operatives to carry out missions.”
It was written shortly after Mexican President Vicente Fox issued an
executive decree on April 11, 2003, creating the Instituto de los Mexicanos en
el Exterior (IME) or Institute of Mexicans Abroad, a decentralized
administrative agency of Mexico’s Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Secretary
of Foreign Relations).
The agency is charged with promoting the values of the migrant experience
and worthy treatment of Mexicans who live abroad, encouraging the creation of
reunion spaces, and promoting communication with and between members of Mexican
communities who live abroad.
And Mexican consular offices, which now number 48 in the United States, with
mobile consular offices in trailers or on public school grounds, are vigorously
promoting the Mexican matricula consular identification card for its citizens
living illegally in the United States.
And, as Hayes brought up in 2004, Mexico was issuing these cards to develop
a database, just like bin Laden, “to deploy illegals to state legislatures and
city councils across America.”
Matricula consular carrying Mexican nationals would then “pack the gallery
and seek to apply pressure against legislators who sponsor or intend to vote for
bills that enhance immigration law enforcement.”
Two years later the deployment of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens
marching in our streets was not simply achieved through radio advertising.
The IME has six separate commissions to deal with border, economic,
educational, health, legal and political matters.
Isabel Garcia, director of the Pima County Legal Defender’s Office, served
on the IME Consultative Council for Border Matters through the Mexican Consulate
Office in Tucson from 2003 through 2005.
Garcia is also the founder of Coalicion de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights
Coalition), cochair of Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras (Indigenous Alliance
without Borders) and serves on the board of directors of National Network for
Immigrants & Refugee Rights.
On Dec. 14, 2006, Garcia was awarded Mexico’s National Award for Human
Rights in Mexico City in recognition of her 30 years of “continuous and arduous
work” in favor of human rights for Mexicans living illegally in the United
States.
As a lawyer working for Pima County, Garcia’s promotion of foreign policy
and illegal activity is beyond questionable.
The comments for Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct ER 8.4 Misconduct,
say, “Lawyers holding public office assume legal responsibilities going beyond
those of other citizens. A lawyer’s abuse of public office can suggest an
inability to fulfill the professional role of lawyers.”
Has the matricula database enabled Garcia to successfully mobilize the
masses of illegal aliens to protest our government and violently counter-protest
Americans attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights in Tucson, most
notably against Roy Warden, the notorious Mexican flag burner, who holds weekly
public forums denouncing illegal immigration?
Garcia rounded up the masses last year to protest Governor Napolitano’s
signing of HB 2779, the fair and legal employment act, claiming the bill would
create a hostile environment for both employers and workers alike, and said fear
of persecution would push more workers into the shadows while leading to
“wholesale abuse, racial profiling and hostility in the workplace.”
At the rally, Garcia denounced the “brutal emphasis on enforcement,” which
she said denies the humanity of undocumented (illegal alien) workers and
disregards the economic conditions that compel them to seek jobs in the United
States.
Garcia condemned other groups involved in the illegal immigration movement,
saying they “caved in to the right-wing agenda.”
She said, “We have to stand firm. We have to say ‘No’ to enforcement. End
the militarization of the border! Abolish the Border Patrol!”
During a presentation for the ICM Consultative Council for Border Matters,
Garcia said the world should be ashamed of our politics that are responsible for
3,000 deaths.
Garcia organized another protest last December against the Tucson Police
Department, because, during a traffic stop, officers determined Miriam Aviles de
Reyes was in the country illegally and contacted ICE, which resulted in her
being ordered deported back to Mexico.
Although Garcia didn’t deny Aviles de Reyes was in the country illegally,
she said the police overstepped their bounds by violating the department’s own
policy to not enforce immigration laws.
In 2002, Garcia was quoted in People’s Weekly World Newspaper, where she
said the blame for migrant deaths in the desert must be placed “at the feet of
Congress and this administration.”
In May 2005, Garcia was part of a Spanish 3401 course offered by the
University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts titled “Service-Learning in the
Chicano/Latino Community.”
The course included an active week-long program with BorderLinks and
community service with Derechos Humanos in Tucson.
The course overview said, “You will study topics such as the global economy
and its effects on emigration, the U.S./Mexican border, the U.S. immigration
services, racism and white privilege, and human rights.”
An October 2006 article titled, “The Walls of Death U.S. and Mexico, was
posted on “Mexico Escucha” (Mexico Listens), a Mexican blog, where Garcia warned
that illegal aliens would have to resort to civil disobedience and acts of
solidarity to prevent further violations against the basic guarantees to illegal
aliens in a country where they are “trapped by fear.”
Garcia has also participated in ASU’s Institute for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
and Transgender Studies as part of a seminar titled, “Sex, Race & Globalization”
for the segment on migration.
Last year Garcia was quoted in the Tucson Star saying, “The Coalition de
Derechos Humanos will focus on keeping border security measures out of
immigration bills” calling the immigrants’ rights lobby, the Democrats and
Mexico’s strategy “an absolute failure.” She asked, “What did you get? Did you
get amnesty for one person? You got a big fat zero.”
On March 14, 2008, Garcia issued a press release through Derechos Humanos
with a call to action for all allies to write to U.S. District Court Judge John
Roll, U.S. Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva to halt the proposal to:
“Demand an end to the criminalization and prosecutions of hard-working men and
women who are the targets and survivors of our irresponsible border and economic
strategies.”
On March 27, Warden served Garcia with a federal complaint, which was
assigned to Roll.
On April 9, Roll recused himself from presiding over the case, citing a
“conflict of interest.”
While Garcia does her bidding at the behest of the Mexican government she
collects her paycheck from American taxpayers as she thumbs her nose at the rule
of law and her responsibilities as a member of the bar, especially as director
of the Pima County Legal Defender’s Office.
Part II will zoom in on Garcia’s funding mechanisms for the Coalicion de
Derechos Humanos and Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras.
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