Mexican police fleeing cartels find U.S. reluctant to grant asylum

Police officers seeking refuge in this country face an uncertain future. If their asylum applications are rejected, they can be deported to Mexico, to face near-certain retaliation from the cartels. To avoid such a fate, they can try to strike a deal with U.S. authorities to provide information about drug trafficking in Mexico. Or they can try to remain in this country illegally.

Their plight poses a quandary for U.S. officials, who are seeking to bolster honest Mexican police to curb the influence of the cartels.

"These cases are problematic," said Kathleen Walker, an El Paso lawyer and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. "It's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole."

In recent months, judges have granted refuge to a few Mexicans fleeing drug-related violence, according to immigration lawyers. But none were police officers.

George Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and an expert on U.S.-Mexico relations, said that if immigration judges began to grant asylum liberally to people fleeing the cartels, "We'd have literally tens of thousands of police officers coming to the United States, not to mention some mayors, too."

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Cartels' long reach

In some cases, disillusioned or terrified officers simply head for a border post and ask for asylum. They are held in detention facilities while waiting for their applications to be reviewed by asylum officers and a federal immigration court, a process that can take years. More often, Mexican police enter the country on visitor visas; they then have up to a year to apply for asylum. Such applicants typically remain free while awaiting a ruling.

Through immigration lawyers, interviews were arranged with Ledezma and two other Mexican police officers now in this country. Their accounts provide a glimpse of the drug cartels' reach and brazenness.

One of the officers, a detective in Baja California, received a call seeking inside information about two jailed murder suspects linked to the cartels.

The 39-year-old detective, interviewed on condition that he would be identified only as Alvarez, said he suspected that a fellow officer had set him up for the bribery attempt.

Alvarez said he had been brash enough to ask how some of his colleagues could afford fancy clothes, new cars and expensive weapons on their $1,000-a-month salaries.