http://www.latnn.com/cgi-local/daily.pl?239-11
Saturday August 28, 1999
UNITED STATES
U.N. TO STUDY SITUATION OF IMMIGRANTS CROSSING THE BORDER
San Diego, Aug 27 (EFE).- A California legal organization reported Thursday that U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson will study the situation of immigrants on the border this year.
The
director of California Rural Legal Assistance, Claudia Smith,
said that Robinson will travel along part of the U.S.-Mexican
border to get a first-hand account of the conditions of the illegal
immigrants.
Robinson's visit to the border is tentatively scheduled for November and will coincide with her trip to Mexico where she will analyze human rights conditions in the southeastern state of Chiapas.
California Rural Legal Assistance and another six human rights organizations in Mexico have been requesting the U.N. Human Rights Commission to review the conditions of the migrants for over a year.
Smith testified before the U.N. last year that the U.S. Border Patrol in California had "caused" the death of illegal immigrants, who - in order to avoid the strict vigilance of the border - searched for more dangerous areas in which to cross into the United States.
According to statistics provided by a coalition of human rights groups on both sides of the border, so far this year 77 illegal immigrants have died in California, including three Salvadorans. The rest were of Mexican nationality.
Nearly half of those who died this year suffered sunstroke in the desert, the least patrolled area along the border, while 12 people died of hypothermia in the high altitudes of the mountains.
In March, authorities found the remains of eight illegal immigrants who froze to death.
More than a dozen immigrants who died this year, lost their lives in accidents on the highway, mainly because they were riding in the open beds of pickups or in vehicles with little or no ventilation.
Smith criticized what she considered to be a policy of acquiescence on the part of the Mexican government in light of the number of immigrants who died trying to cross the border.
Smith said that at the latest bilateral meeting on issues such as illegal immigration, the Mexican consul in San Diego, Luis Herrera Lasso, said that his country accepts the right of the United States to guard its borders as it deems appropriate.
According to Smith, Herrera Lasso has stated publicly that only Mexican officials have the right to present lawsuits when Mexicans die on the border, but he did not question the policy of U.S. Border Patrol, which the activist qualified as "deadly."
