Fascinating Drug Reading

. . . To gain political asylum, applicants must prove they have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their political opinion or an "immutable characteristic" such as race, religion, or nationality. When it comes to people fleeing Mexico, the United States has quibbled with claims of immutability, telling Mexican cops running from the cartels that they should just stop being a cop, move to another part of Mexico, become a plumber. But Emilio can't hide from the Army. Those three stories he filed in 2005, the opinions therein, they created an immutable impression on the Army. After that he apologized. He ceased writing anything bad about the Army even when he witnessed them killing people in his town in February 2008. None of this helped. When the Army swept the area again a few months later, they came after him. . . .

There are two Mexicos.

There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican Army and the Mérida Initiative, the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic.

It does not exist.

There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits, where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed.

The reporter lives in this second Mexico. . . .

He is immediately jailed, as is his son. They are separated. He is taken to El Paso and placed in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center run by Deco, Inc. He is deloused, given a blue jumpsuit, and set to work scrubbing floors for a dollar a day. He is denied bond, and no hearing is scheduled. Had he entered the United States illegally and then asked for asylum, he would be eligible for bond. But since he entered legally and asked for asylum at the port of entry he is kept in prison because the Department of Homeland Security declares that Emilio has failed to prove that he "would not pose a danger to the community. . . . "

We Bring Fear

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Not my issue, but one of the best impartial considerations of the issue I've seen: The Patriot's Guide to Legalization

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. . . Rangers and game wardens say pot growers are a major threat to California's 23,500 square miles of wilderness (which doesn't include state or regional lands). "These guys literally create cities within your national forests," says Laura Mark, a special agent with the US Forest Service. Growers clear land year-round, plant crops in the spring, and haul out the harvest in the fall, often leaving behind mounds of trash and dead animals, denuded hillsides, and streams full of sediment and human waste. . . .

High Sierras: The woods are lovely, dark, and...full of gun-toting narcofarmers