http://www.concordmonitor.com/stories/front2003/031103mexico_2003.shtml
Where outlaws and Robin Hood meet
FBI's attempt to catch train robbers backfires
By MARY JORDAN
The Washington Post
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The Mexican bandits wait in the darkness for the sound that tells them pay dirt is approaching. And right on schedule, the Union Pacific train whistle cuts the darkness, shrill and clear, and a slow-moving freight train rumbles around the curve.
The FBI says that for years the bandits have been hustling up to the tracks through a hole in the fence at the U.S.-Mexico border. Using techniques passed down from father to son, they climb aboard and trip the emergency brake to stop the train. Then, the FBI says, they smash open containers, quickly grab as much loot as they can carry - on a good night television sets, on a bad night toilet paper - and scurry back through the fence into Mexico.
Train robberies have been common along this stretch of borderland, where Mexicans living in the tin shacks of a slum community called Anapra look across the tracks to American prosperity and, with alarming regularity, steal some of it for themselves.
Then the FBI's Hardrick Crawford Jr. came along.
"It's like the 1880s here - the Dalton gang and Jessie James ride again," said Crawford, special agent in charge of the FBI office in El Paso, just across the border from Ciudad Juarez. "Union Pacific was getting hit nightly. Hello! It's 2003. You don't rob trains. We decided enough was enough."
So after nightfall on Sept. 12, Crawford put into action a joint sting operation. About 70 FBI and U.S. Border Patrol agents lay hidden, some in random container cars of a train, some near the tracks. On the Mexican side, 70 Juarez police and federal customs agents, also hidden, waited as a half-mile-long freight train chugged toward bandit territory.
But nothing went as planned - a violent brawl erupted, severely injuring two FBI agents - and the fallout from that night now threatens future law enforcement cooperation between the two countries.
"It's definitely had a chilling effect," Crawford said.
He said it would now be much more difficult for the FBI to help investigate the unsolved murders of more than 300 Juarez women in recent years. As the body count along the border continues to rise, international human rights groups have asked that the bureau get involved.
The robbers stopped the train as usual that September night. Gang leader Eduardo "Lalo" Calderon and nearly 20 men smashed open a container - where three FBI agents were waiting. The ugly fistfight spilled off the train into the sand.
FBI agent Samantha Mikeska managed to handcuff Calderon before someone cracked her over the head with a baseball bat. Despite a shattered bone in her face, she held onto Calderon as his buddies dragged both of them through the fence into Mexico.
FBI agent Sergio Barrio, his own skull fractured in the fight, ran through the fence to try to rescue Mikeska. Calderon, still handcuffed, fled into the night with his gang. As the two bleeding FBI agents scrambled back onto U.S. soil, a third FBI agent fired a shot into the air, bringing dozens of U.S. and Mexican agents running.
There the disagreements begin. The Anapra residents and their attorneys say several armed FBI agents, who have no jurisdiction in Mexico and are not allowed to carry guns here, illegally accompanied Juarez police searching for suspects. These accusations, never backed up by any evidence, have been widely reported in Mexican media as an "FBI invasion" of Mexico.
Crawford calls that "nonsense." He said no FBI agent went searching for suspects in Mexico that night. The only ones who set foot on Mexican soil, he said, were Mikeska, who was dragged, and Barrio, who went to rescue her.
"I am well aware that there is ultra-sensitivity about us operating in Mexico," Crawford said. "But if you call that an invasion, I say, 'Knock yourself out.' "
One of the few undisputed facts is that after a search that night of Anapra, on the western edge of Juarez, 10 residents were marched onto U.S. territory by the hMexican police and turned over as suspects. Those people claimed to be innocent bystanders. In December, after they had spent three months in U.S. jails, a federal judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to charge them and ordered them released.
Two other Mexicans arrested that night remain in custody in the United States, facing charges of assault and attempted robbery. Calderon is a fugitive.
To the FBI, the incident illustrates how all too easy it is for common thugs to use the border as a shield from justice. But to many Mexicans, the issue has snowballed into an emotional rallying point - not about crime, but about national sovereignty.
Last week, a Mexican federal prosecutor in Juarez called for the arrest of the Mexican police and customs agents involved. He wants them charged with treason. A judge is now considering whether to issue arrest warrants. A spokesman for the Juarez police declined to comment.
"What happened that night bothers anybody who has blood in their veins," said Rodolfo Quevedo Gallardo, a defense attorney representing the 10 Mexicans. Quevedo, who is considering a run for mayor, said the city's police "betrayed their country" and the FBI offended Mexicans by "violating their sovereignty" that night.
He and others said it is understandable that Mexicans, who endure long lines and seemingly endless questions from U.S. border authorities every day to cross into the United States to work or shop, resent the idea of U.S. officers barging into their territory without permission.
"We paid for what the robbers did; it's not fair," said Concepcion Garcia, 51, who said she was dragged out of her house by her hair and forced onto the U.S. side of the fence by the Mexican police. She said she lost her job cleaning homes because of the three months she was detained.
In Anapra, one of the poorest and largest slum communities along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, the train robbery incident has also become a symbol of the inequality between the two nations. Juarez Mayor Jesus Alfredo Delgado said emotions can be raw along a border where "the First World meets Third World."
"I don't think it is fair for us to have so little," said Garcia, who can look over the tracks from her shack and see Sunland Park, N.M., an upscale community with a well-watered country club.
Many Anapra residents see the robberies as almost romantic, like Robin Hood righting social injustice. As one said, the trains kept coming despite the losses, so it couldn't have been that big of a deal to whatever rich company owned them.
John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad, declined to estimate the total value of goods stolen over the years, but noted that since the September raid, there have been no successful train robberies.
Tuesday, Mar 11, 2003
Where outlaws and Robin Hood meet
FBI's attempt to catch train robbers backfires
By MARY JORDAN
The Washington Post
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The Mexican bandits wait in the darkness for the sound that tells them pay dirt is approaching. And right on schedule, the Union Pacific train whistle cuts the darkness, shrill and clear, and a slow-moving freight train rumbles around the curve.
The FBI says that for years the bandits have been hustling up to the tracks through a hole in the fence at the U.S.-Mexico border. Using techniques passed down from father to son, they climb aboard and trip the emergency brake to stop the train. Then, the FBI says, they smash open containers, quickly grab as much loot as they can carry - on a good night television sets, on a bad night toilet paper - and scurry back through the fence into Mexico.
Train robberies have been common along this stretch of borderland, where Mexicans living in the tin shacks of a slum community called Anapra look across the tracks to American prosperity and, with alarming regularity, steal some of it for themselves.
Then the FBI's Hardrick Crawford Jr. came along.
"It's like the 1880s here - the Dalton gang and Jessie James ride again," said Crawford, special agent in charge of the FBI office in El Paso, just across the border from Ciudad Juarez. "Union Pacific was getting hit nightly. Hello! It's 2003. You don't rob trains. We decided enough was enough."
So after nightfall on Sept. 12, Crawford put into action a joint sting operation. About 70 FBI and U.S. Border Patrol agents lay hidden, some in random container cars of a train, some near the tracks. On the Mexican side, 70 Juarez police and federal customs agents, also hidden, waited as a half-mile-long freight train chugged toward bandit territory.
But nothing went as planned - a violent brawl erupted, severely injuring two FBI agents - and the fallout from that night now threatens future law enforcement cooperation between the two countries.
"It's definitely had a chilling effect," Crawford said.
He said it would now be much more difficult for the FBI to help investigate the unsolved murders of more than 300 Juarez women in recent years. As the body count along the border continues to rise, international human rights groups have asked that the bureau get involved.
The robbers stopped the train as usual that September night. Gang leader Eduardo "Lalo" Calderon and nearly 20 men smashed open a container - where three FBI agents were waiting. The ugly fistfight spilled off the train into the sand.
FBI agent Samantha Mikeska managed to handcuff Calderon before someone cracked her over the head with a baseball bat. Despite a shattered bone in her face, she held onto Calderon as his buddies dragged both of them through the fence into Mexico.
FBI agent Sergio Barrio, his own skull fractured in the fight, ran through the fence to try to rescue Mikeska. Calderon, still handcuffed, fled into the night with his gang. As the two bleeding FBI agents scrambled back onto U.S. soil, a third FBI agent fired a shot into the air, bringing dozens of U.S. and Mexican agents running.
There the disagreements begin. The Anapra residents and their attorneys say several armed FBI agents, who have no jurisdiction in Mexico and are not allowed to carry guns here, illegally accompanied Juarez police searching for suspects. These accusations, never backed up by any evidence, have been widely reported in Mexican media as an "FBI invasion" of Mexico.
Crawford calls that "nonsense." He said no FBI agent went searching for suspects in Mexico that night. The only ones who set foot on Mexican soil, he said, were Mikeska, who was dragged, and Barrio, who went to rescue her.
"I am well aware that there is ultra-sensitivity about us operating in Mexico," Crawford said. "But if you call that an invasion, I say, 'Knock yourself out.' "
One of the few undisputed facts is that after a search that night of Anapra, on the western edge of Juarez, 10 residents were marched onto U.S. territory by the hMexican police and turned over as suspects. Those people claimed to be innocent bystanders. In December, after they had spent three months in U.S. jails, a federal judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to charge them and ordered them released.
Two other Mexicans arrested that night remain in custody in the United States, facing charges of assault and attempted robbery. Calderon is a fugitive.
To the FBI, the incident illustrates how all too easy it is for common thugs to use the border as a shield from justice. But to many Mexicans, the issue has snowballed into an emotional rallying point - not about crime, but about national sovereignty.
Last week, a Mexican federal prosecutor in Juarez called for the arrest of the Mexican police and customs agents involved. He wants them charged with treason. A judge is now considering whether to issue arrest warrants. A spokesman for the Juarez police declined to comment.
"What happened that night bothers anybody who has blood in their veins," said Rodolfo Quevedo Gallardo, a defense attorney representing the 10 Mexicans. Quevedo, who is considering a run for mayor, said the city's police "betrayed their country" and the FBI offended Mexicans by "violating their sovereignty" that night.
He and others said it is understandable that Mexicans, who endure long lines and seemingly endless questions from U.S. border authorities every day to cross into the United States to work or shop, resent the idea of U.S. officers barging into their territory without permission.
"We paid for what the robbers did; it's not fair," said Concepcion Garcia, 51, who said she was dragged out of her house by her hair and forced onto the U.S. side of the fence by the Mexican police. She said she lost her job cleaning homes because of the three months she was detained.
In Anapra, one of the poorest and largest slum communities along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, the train robbery incident has also become a symbol of the inequality between the two nations. Juarez Mayor Jesus Alfredo Delgado said emotions can be raw along a border where "the First World meets Third World."
"I don't think it is fair for us to have so little," said Garcia, who can look over the tracks from her shack and see Sunland Park, N.M., an upscale community with a well-watered country club.
Many Anapra residents see the robberies as almost romantic, like Robin Hood righting social injustice. As one said, the trains kept coming despite the losses, so it couldn't have been that big of a deal to whatever rich company owned them.
John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad, declined to estimate the total value of goods stolen over the years, but noted that since the September raid, there have been no successful train robberies.
Tuesday, Mar 11, 2003
-ing bad!
