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Expert: Violence drives 3,000 Mexican families to US

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-08-16 10:25

MEXICO CITY -- Drug-related violence and murders have forced some 3,000 families from the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez to emigrate to the United States this year, a US political scientist said Friday.

Antonio Payan, professor of political science at the University of Texas, said most of these families were middle-class and had moved to the United States for safety reasons.

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The Juarez mayor, Jose Reyes Ferriz, admitted he "knew about some families that had left to live in El Paso, the sixth-largest city in Texas, due to the violence," but he did not have the statistics.

Juarez has some 1.5 million inhabitants and there have already been about 800 killings there this year, along with increased car robberies, extortion, kidnappings, and protection rackets since last year, according to the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

Some 38 kidnappings were reported among the business community this year.

Meanwhile, 2,000 people have been killed in Mexico in attacks related to drug trafficking and organized crime this year. Authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers in the country, including 2,500 in Juarez to combat drug-related crime.