The Mexican authorities often complain, and with good reason, about the way as his citizens are treated on the border with the United States. Many there fall down victims of the groups of observers who try to do justice for proper hand or of racist groups that spill his poison in innocent persons only for the color of his skin.

Pero México needs to give a glance how the immigrants of other countries are treated inside his territory. Compared with what some immigrants face when they enter Mexico illegally, to cross towards the United States without documents is like a walk in the park.

The last report on the sequestration of immigrants prepared by the National Commission of Human rights of Mexico, shows how the American dream for many immigrants – mostly Central Americans - who cross Mexico trying to come to the United States, returns in a nightmare once they enter Mexican ground.

In a period of five months from September, 2008 until February of this year, the commission documented 9.758 immigrants' sequestrations. That is equivalent to an average of 1.600 per month, up to 50 a day. With base in these numbers, he calculates that the number of sequestrations this year might reach the 20.000.

According to the report, the immigrants are supported in subhuman conditions. Be already in wine vaults, rooms of hotel, camps or even inside vehicles, the immigrants are tied of hands and feet, his bandaged eyes, sometimes they feed them only once a day. Some of them are forced to sleep nudes in the apartment. Nine of every ten said that they were threatened with death. Many were tortured and some even violated while they were hoping that his rescues should pay.

Most of these atrocities are committed by traffickers of human beings and by groups of the organized crime, like "Zees," a well-known band of responsible drug traffickers of a lot of of the drug trafficker - violence in Mexico. Nevertheless, in at least 91 of the documented cases, they were agents and in charge Mexican police officers those who supported the captive immigrants. Others say that the police concealed the sequestrations in exchange for money and/or alcohol.

Mexico has become in the last years the capital of the sequestration in the world. In most cases the sequestration victims are Mexican, sometimes belonging to prominent families that are ready to pay millions for the return of his dear beings. There have been many unfortunate cases in which sequestration victims are murdered although his rescue is paid.

But the immigrants' sequestration is another history. The sequestration of these foreigners does departs increasingly from the financing of the criminal groups. It is already not sufficient for the called "speculators" or "poulterers" to receive big money quantities for transporting persons towards the border; now they take them as hostages, increasing his profit.

The Commission of Human rights calculates that during the brought period of five months, the kidnappers obtained up to $ 25 millions in profit. It is a lucrative business that degrades the human life of a most horrible way.

The illegal immigration is a very complex matter. The absence of opportunities in its own countries has to go out for many immigrants, with the perspective to take a decent life and to help his dear beings who stayed at home. It is a survival matter. Something has to be done to look for solution, both in the fatherlands of the immigrants and in the United States. It is not sufficient to protect our borders, but to fill the big labor need in many industries that depend on the labor of the immigrants. But in the process, the immigrants need to be treated like what they are, human beings in search of a better life.

Mexico cannot do the double game. The Mexican authorities need to punish severely the violence against immigrants of other countries before demanding a decent treatment for its own citizens abroad

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.