Mexicans Blame Americans for ‘Death Train’
Jerome R. Corsi, WND, July 13, 2014
The infamous Mexican “Death Train”–also called “La Bestia” [“The Beast’]–on which tens of thousands of illegal alien children from Central America are traveling through Mexico to the United States–is being targeted by criminal complaints from Mexican authorities for allegedly violating the civil rights of passengers.
The Beast is owned and run by a Mexican wholly owned subsidiary of Kansas City Southern, a U.S. train company that acquired the Mexican equipment and routes in 2005 to create a “NAFTA Railroad” that was intended to fit into a multi-modal transportation technology so Chinese companies could deliver products into the heartland of the United States as an alternative to utilizing the West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Mexican prosecutors have filed criminal complaints charging railroad with complicity in violations of the civil rights of the thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America illegally hitching rides on the train in their efforts to cross into the U.S. over the border with Mexico.
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The charges are that the railroad companies were complicit in the commission of various crimes against migrants jumping on the train for a ride to the Mexican border, including the crimes of robbery, human trafficking, kidnapping, murder and extortion.
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A WOLA report issued June 17, 2014, described the difficulty illegal immigrants taking “La Bestia” north as follows:
Migrants in the southern border zone are drawn to ‘La Bestia,’ the train that heads northward to central Mexico and then on to the U.S. border. For hundreds of miles they ride on the roofs of the train cars trying to avoid fatal falls, hot days, frigid nights, and low-clearance tunnels. Every eight to ten days or so, trains depart from two routes that originate near the southern border.
Not only is the ride physically dangerous, WOLA noted, but the lax security on “La Bestia” leaves migrants at the mercy of Mexican gangs, bandits, kidnapers and corrupt officials.
“The stunning frequency of kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, rape, and homicide puts Central American migrants’ plight in Mexico atop the list of the Western Hemisphere’s worst humanitarian emergencies,” the WOLA report concluded.
