LA RUANA, Mexico - Jittery families cram into his tiny office daily. Hundreds more have appeared at the San Diego border 1,500 miles away, clutching an official-looking letter bearing his name, gambling that its description of the violence in this blistering stretch of central Mexico will help them gain asylum in the United States.
The letter has quickly become a document of hope for the desperate. And the writer, an obscure local official named C. Ramon Contreras Orozco, keeps delivering, creating an unusual bureaucratic tangle that is testing U.S. asylum policy.
“I’m trying to help,” said Contreras, the occupancy chief of the town where a drug cartel has declared war on residents. “People keep coming, telling me, ‘I’m afraid for me and my children. I need to go.’”
Asylum requests along the border with Mexico are soaring: Claims more than doubled to 36,000 in fiscal 2013, from 13,800 in 2012. U.S. officials think that Contreras’ letters were presented in nearly 2,000 of the most recent cases, turning him into a focal point for the anxiety about violence in Mexico.
Indeed, by churning out documents that highlight Mexico’s inability to protect civilians in the region, Contreras, 38 - a hefty lime farmer in his first government job - has managed to both shame his own country and sign his way into the latest immigration feud in the United States.
“I’m just verifying reality,” Contreras said. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”
Mexican officials have become frustrated by attention to this agricultural area’s slide into chaos, with drug cartels battling armed self-defense groups. And in Washington, influential lawmakers, including Robert Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, are increasingly concerned that criminals are abusing the asylum process, cheating their way into the country and disappearing for at least a few years until their cases are heard.
Contreras’ efforts rouse both concerns. In fiscal 2013, most of the petitions for asylum based on a “credible fear of persecution or torture” came from Central America. But of the roughly 2,500 cases that came from Mexico, Contreras estimated that nearly 80 percent of them involved his letters. Officials with the Department of Homeland Security said they considered that more or less accurate.
And each case is a riddle. Are Contreras’ assertions of the dangers in La Ruana enough to give emigrating families a chance of asylum in the United States? Are the letters showing up at the San Diego border even originals?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, immigration authorities said. The circumstances are often so murky that even members of the same family, carrying the same letter, said they have received different decisions on their requests to stay in the United States and apply for asylum.
It all began in mid-March, Contreras said, when a young woman appeared in his office, begging for a way to reach her grandfather in the United States. Just a few weeks earlier, on Feb. 24, residents had formed a self-defense group and publicly challenged the Knights Templar drug cartel,which led to a vicious gun battle near the town plaza just across from Contreras’ office.
The Knights Templar then made it deadly to pick or pack limes, taking away this fertile valley’s main livelihood. Gas had also become scarce because suppliers feared driving in, and the municipal president had just fled amid accusations of cartel ties, suddenly making Contreras all that was left of local government.
The letter, he said, was a response to desperation, hatched by him and his secretary while the young woman waited for a response. Federal officials have rejected that assessment, noting that additional troops have quieted violence in some areas. But here in a part of the country that security experts describe as Mexico’s toughest battleground in its war on organized crime, entire families have been turning to Contreras for a way out.
Homeland Security officials emphasize that the asylum process has always been complicated, with officers scrutinizing a range of evidence to determine if applicants meet the legal standard of a “credible fear,” which typically allows them to stay in the country freely while their asylum case proceeds to a judge. There are also safeguards and background checks, Homeland Security officials said, to keep out the criminals and fraud that Goodlatte has said are becoming a bigger part of the system.
Most asylum claims are ultimately rejected by a judge. In 2012, only 1 percent of the requests from Mexico were granted - 126 people, a fraction of the 482,000 immigrants who received legal residency.
Front Section, Pages 11 on 12/29/2013