Journalist seeking asylum in U.S. gives up, returns to Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Dallas News

3 HRS AGO
Angela Kocherga, Mexico Border reporter
Connect with Angela Kocherga


EL PASO — A Mexican journalist seeking asylum in the U.S. after reporting on police brutality gave up his fight and returned to his country last Tuesday after spending nearly four months in an immigration detention center he described as “hell.”

His lawyer, Carlos Spector, Reporters Without Borders and the Borderland Immigration Council, a coalition of immigration lawyers and advocacy organizations, had urged U.S. authorities to release the Mexican journalist while his case moved through the immigration court.

Martin Mendez Pineda, 26, arrived on the Texas-Mexico border in February and asked for asylum at the Paso del Norte International Bridge in El Paso. The reporter said he was fleeing death threats in Guerrero, where he worked for the Novedades Acapulco newspaper.

“Undoubtedly, he’s still at risk,” said Balbina Flores, a Reporters Without Borders representative in Mexico. Flores said the organization is in contact with Mendez but won’t reveal his location because it might jeopardize his safety.


Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2017/05/22/journalist-seeking-asylum-us-gives-returns-mexico

[Judi Lynn]

1. Mexican journalist abducted in Michoacn state

Mexico City, May 22, 2017--Mexican authorities must undertake every effort to secure the safe release of journalist Salvador Adame Pardo, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Gunmen abducted Adame, director of the television station 6TV, on May 18 from the central Mexican town of Nueva Italia.

"Violence and attempts to intimidate the press in Mexico are preventing journalists from doing their jobs safely," Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, said from New York. "We call on Mexican authorities to act quickly to ensure the safe release of Salvador Adame Pardo."

According to witnesses cited in media reports, armed men abducted Adame shortly before 8 p.m. on Nueva Italia's Lázaro Cárdenas Avenue, near a water purifying plant. The attackers forced him into their vehicle, a black SUV, and then fled the scene in the direction of Nuevo Coróndiro, northwest of Nueva Italia, approximately 250 miles west of Mexico City, according to the same witness reports.

In a brief statement Monday, the Michoacán State Attorney General's Office said authorities opened an investigation hours after the abduction took place, and that because Adame is a journalist, the federal attorney general's office (PGR) had been notified and that the federal police and military were searching the area around Nueva Italia.

More:
https://cpj.org/2017/05/mexican-journalist-abducted-in-michoacan-state.php

[still_one]

2. just awful

[luvMIdog]

3. :(

[duhneece]

4. Sickening of the US...in so many ways.

Detention center is 'hell'
Reporter not given asylum
...