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Mexican immigration officers have a long history of demanding bribes at international airports and ports of entry in exchange for circumventing laws and procedures that would prevent people from entering the country.
Breitbart Texas was able to obtain internal affairs reports from Mexico’s National Migration Institute detailing investigations into multiple corrupt officers. Law enforcement sources in Mexico’s INM revealed that in most cases when corrupt officers are discovered, they are not disciplined, prosecuted or fired, but simply transferred to another assignment.
In a report, INM officials investigated officer Francisco Javier Hernandez Varela, who was stationed at the International Airport’s Tijuana Cross-Border Terminal. The investigation into Hernandez Varela involved him and other officers allowing people without travel documents into the country and not entering the traveler’s information into a national immigration database in what is known as irregular detention. Bribes, depending on nationality, can range from $20 to hundreds of dollars. Investigations at the Tijuana airport began in 2020, however, the matter has been largely kept under wraps.
In early 2022, several travelers, including three groups of students from San Diego, claimed that INM agents took them into an interview room and asked for $20, Union Noticias revealed. Extorted travelers filed complaints with the local tourism office in Tijuana. said the head of the office El Sol de Tijuana in April that they had spoken to INM officials in an attempt to prevent the issue from scaring away visitors.
Investigative material obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed that a traveler identified as Abraham “AG” entered the country from the US, claiming to be a Mexican citizen, but was unable to produce any form of identification, such as a passport or Mexican voter card.
“I don’t have any of that,” Abraham said in Spanish.
The man claimed to have been born in Guaymas, Sonora, but had become a US citizen. INM agent Hernandez Varela asked the traveler for his personal information about his date of birth and where he had registered. The agent then claimed that Abraham was not coming into any database and asked him to go to the side of the booth.
After a brief conversation and an apparent exchange of coins hidden in the papers, Hernandez allows Abraham to continue and the agent then walks away from his booth covering the cash.
The internal affairs report revealed that a subsequent search of the database by INM investigators showed that Abraham’s entry into the country had not been recorded.
Editor’s note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The authors would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels operating in these areas, including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, if they did not use a pseudonym. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published both in English and in the original Spanish. This article was written by “Williams Cortez” from Baja California.
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