MEXICO IS COMING AT ICE FROM EVERY DIRECTION
After Mexican citizens died in custody and during enforcement operations, Mexico opened multiple routes around a federal system that cannot be trusted to investigate itself.
By Tom Hicks
Mexico figured out something Washington keeps hoping the rest of us won’t notice. Letting ICE investigate ICE is like asking the guy holding the bloody knife whether anything unusual happened in the kitchen.
For months, Mexico did what governments are expected to do when their citizens die in another country’s custody. It sent diplomatic notes, asked for explanations, demanded investigations, and raised the cases with American officials while waiting for the machinery of government to cough up something resembling an honest answer.
What it got instead was the federal fog machine.
ICE maintained control of the records, and federal officials maintained control of the public story. Families were left waiting for answers from the same system that had taken custody of their loved ones and handed some of them back in coffins.
Mexico has had enough of that shit.
It’s now asking state attorneys general and prosecutors to open criminal investigations into the deaths of Mexican citizens in ICE custody and during immigration operations. It has sent formal demands to detention facilities accused of practices that may have contributed to those deaths, is considering civil action against the private companies running the centers, has contacted the Justice Department, and is pushing for scrutiny through the United Nations human-rights system. (Reuters)
That’s not one angry diplomatic letter sliding into a federal inbox and dying a quiet death. Mexico is coming at ICE from every direction it can find.
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The count behind Mexico’s action is seventeen Mexican citizens. Fourteen died after ICE took them into custody, while three more died during enforcement operations. Mexico wants American authorities to examine whether crimes were committed and whether officers, detention personnel, contractors, or anyone else responsible should face consequences. (AP News)
Fourteen people died in custody. That phrase gets tossed around so often it starts to sound almost administrative, like somebody misplaced fourteen files somewhere in a filing cabinet.
But custody means the government controlled where those people slept, whether they saw a doctor, whether their symptoms got taken seriously, and whether help showed up before it was too fucking late. They couldn’t walk out, call another hospital for a second opinion, or decide the place looked dangerous and take their chances somewhere else.
The government had them. Then they died.
At that point, “we’re reviewing the matter” isn’t an answer. It’s bureaucratic incense, waved around until everybody gets tired of the smell of the body.
MEXICO STOPPED ASKING NICELY
Mexico could have sent another furious note to Washington. The administration could have made the right noises about cooperation and mutual respect, then dropped the whole thing into whatever federal drawer holds accountability until the news cycle wandered off to the next disaster.
Instead, Mexico went to state prosecutors.
That was smart as hell.
It doesn’t make these cases immune from federal interference. Federal officers can still raise immunity arguments, and their lawyers can try to move proceedings into federal court, challenge subpoenas, dispute jurisdiction, and stretch every fight out until the witnesses need reading glasses.
But Washington no longer has one complaint to smother.
State officials may now have to decide whether to investigate. Private detention operators could face civil claims and discovery. The Justice Department has formally been put on notice, and international human-rights officials are being asked to look at the same deaths. Mexico has created several places where evidence might surface and several officials who may eventually have to explain why they acted or why they didn’t. (AP News)
Mexico isn’t betting everything on one heroic prosecutor. It’s making sure ICE can’t end the story by closing one door.
That matters because we’ve already watched what happens when the federal government controls the death, the evidence, and the investigation.
Minnesota showed us.
THE FEDERAL ACCOUNTABILITY MAGIC TRICK
Federal agents killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in separate shootings during the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year. State and local officials wanted to run their own investigations, but federal authorities withheld crucial evidence for months. Minnesota officials eventually had to sue the administration just to get access to material tied to those deaths and another federal shooting. (Reuters)
Think about how insane that is.
Federal agents were involved in the killings, after which federal authorities collected the evidence, controlled access to it, and decided what the public would hear. Local prosecutors were told, in effect, to wait outside while Washington examined Washington.
Then everybody was supposed to trust the process.
That’s one hell of an accountability system, provided your definition of accountability is go fuck yourself.
Only this week did Minnesota prosecutors finally receive a large batch of evidence, including body-camera footage, statements, electronic records, and Good’s SUV. They’re still reviewing what they were handed and whether it’s complete. (The Guardian)
Meanwhile, half a year passed.
That delay wasn’t harmless. Time is the federal government’s favorite solvent. Public outrage cools, cameras leave, witnesses get harder to find, and memories get challenged. Officials keep saying an investigation is underway without explaining what’s being investigated or whether the people doing the investigating have any interest in embarrassing their own agency.
When the government controls the scene, the evidence, and the clock, delay becomes a weapon.
Minnesota didn’t just show Mexico that federal cooperation might be slow. It showed that local investigators could be forced to sue for the privilege of examining killings that happened in their own state.
No wonder Mexico decided another diplomatic request wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.
“When the agency involved in a death controls the evidence, the investigation, and the public explanation, accountability becomes whatever that agency says it is.”
THE DEATHS DIDN’T WAIT FOR THE INVESTIGATIONS
While Minnesota was still fighting for evidence from January, ICE agents killed two more men in vehicles within days of each other.
In Houston, an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. DHS acknowledged that agents had been looking for somebody else, and his family said he’d lived in the United States for decades with no criminal record. Federal officials claimed he used his vehicle as a weapon, while witnesses and local officials demanded independent scrutiny of that story. Mexico pointed to his death as it moved past diplomatic protests and into criminal complaints. (AP News)
Then an ICE officer killed a 26-year-old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, during another enforcement operation. Officials said he wasn’t the intended target, and the agents involved weren’t wearing body cameras. Federal authorities again said the vehicle posed a threat. Maine’s attorney general has opened a state investigation, while the FBI is also investigating. (The Wall Street Journal)
You don’t need a journalism degree to see the pattern here. ICE goes looking for one person and ends up killing somebody else. The dead man is in a car, the agents aren’t wearing body cameras, and DHS announces almost immediately that the vehicle became a weapon. Anyone trying to verify that version runs straight into an agency controlling most of what would prove or disprove it.
That isn’t proof that every official account is false. It is proof that nobody with a functioning bullshit detector should take those accounts on faith.
The Houston and Maine shootings aren’t why Mexico acted in the first place. The heart of Mexico’s case is still the fourteen citizens who died while already in ICE custody. But those roadside killings show that this culture of force, secrecy, and institutional self-protection doesn’t stay confined to detention centers.
ICE can be reckless after it locks someone in a cell, and it can be reckless during an operation on a public street. Once somebody’s dead, though, it gets remarkably disciplined about deciding who gets to see the evidence.
ICE has now suspended traffic stops as an arrest tactic after the Houston and Maine shootings. It is also moving toward requiring body-camera coverage and reviewing training for vehicle encounters. Agencies don’t suspend a tactic because everything went beautifully. They suspend it when the bodies become harder to explain. (The Wall Street Journal)
THE CELLS ARE WHERE THE EXCUSES RUN OUT
Street encounters can get chaotic. That doesn’t excuse bad tactics or unnecessary force, but it gives federal officials room to talk about split-second decisions and rapidly changing threats.
Custody is different.
There’s no split second when a sick person spends hours asking for medical care. There’s no sudden ambush when symptoms get documented, staffing is inadequate, or somebody decides a detainee can wait until morning.
When the government confines a person, it takes on the responsibility of keeping that person alive. That’s the deal. You don’t get to lock somebody in a building, decide when he sees a doctor, decide whether his pain matters, and then act baffled when he leaves in a body bag.
That is your fucking responsibility.
Mexico’s pressure on private detention operators may prove especially important because those companies live in the comfortable gap between public power and private accountability. ICE supplies the detainees, contractors provide the beds and medical systems, and taxpayers foot the bill.
Then somebody dies, and everybody starts pointing at the contract.
A civil case can force questions that a DHS press release never will. Who requested medical care? What symptoms were recorded? How many qualified staff members were working? Were previous complaints ignored? Did the company follow its contract, and did ICE know the facility was failing?
More importantly, civil discovery can force documents into the open. Emails, staffing reports, medical logs, incident reports, and internal warnings don’t give a shit how polished the official statement sounded.
Mexico is trying to pry the machine open from several sides because it knows one investigation can be contained. Several investigations get messy, and messy is where the truth sometimes escapes.
WASHINGTON CAN FIGHT THIS, BUT IT CAN’T ERASE IT EASILY
Mexico hasn’t discovered some magical loophole that strips ICE of federal protection. Washington still has immunity claims, jurisdiction fights, and enough taxpayer-funded lawyers to turn a subpoena into a retirement plan.
The administration can resist requests until judges force compliance and drag every legal fight out long enough that families run out of money before the government runs out of excuses.
Mexico knows that, too.
It’s betting that ICE can contain one investigation more easily than it can contain several. A state prosecutor may decline one complaint while another office opens a file. A civil case might survive long enough to reach discovery, or a detention employee could decide he isn’t carrying the whole institution’s sins alone. An international review may preserve testimony and records that would otherwise remain scattered across agencies and contractors.
Mexico doesn’t need every route to work. It needs one of them to reach somewhere ICE cannot control.
That might be a subpoena producing records nobody expected to see, a witness finally answering questions under oath, a video blowing the official version to hell, or a medical log showing somebody begged for help while a contractor kept billing the government.
That’s the danger for ICE.
For years, the agency has treated accountability like a thunderstorm: keep your head down, deny what you can, and wait for it to pass. Mexico is turning it into paperwork with names, dates, lawyers, prosecutors, and demands attached.
That shit is harder to wait out.
THIS COULD BECOME A PLAYBOOK
Other countries will be watching because their citizens can disappear into American detention centers, get hurt during enforcement operations, or die while federal officials control the evidence, too.
Mexico is showing them another way to respond. A government doesn’t have to lean entirely on diplomatic pressure. It can support state criminal complaints, pursue private detention contractors through civil courts, involve local medical examiners, and bring the cases before international institutions.
Most legal campaigns don’t get a clean Hollywood ending, and none of these efforts will produce a conviction or massive judgment. The immediate goal is simpler: make concealment harder.
ICE’s greatest protection has always been centralization. Its agents take control of the scene, federal officials lock down the evidence, government lawyers decide who gets access, and the spokespeople rush out the first version before anyone outside the building can challenge it. By the time records finally emerge, the country has usually moved on to the next outrage.
Mexico’s strategy scatters that pressure. State prosecutors, civil lawyers, international officials, detention companies, medical examiners, and grieving families may all end up asking some version of the same question:
What the fuck happened to these people?
Minnesota showed how easily local investigators could be shut out, while Houston and Maine proved that somebody else could be killed before anyone finished examining the last death. The custody cases make the underlying failure even harder to excuse because ICE controlled nearly every part of those people’s lives and still failed to keep them alive.
Mexico’s answer is brutally simple: stop leaving all the questions with the people holding the evidence.
ICE may still control the badge, but Mexico is making damn sure it no longer controls every room where the dead get discussed.
That may be the part Washington didn’t see coming.
Mexico doesn’t need every complaint, lawsuit, or international review to succeed. It only needs a prosecutor willing to issue subpoenas, a contractor forced to surrender its records, or a witness prepared to tell the truth somewhere ICE can’t edit it.
For years, ICE has counted on controlling the scene, the evidence, and the clock.
Mexico just started taking those advantages away.
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ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO
When federal agents control the death, the evidence, and the investigation, can state prosecutors force real accountability, or will Washington find another way to bury it?
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