Forum Post: Who remembers U.S. Marine. Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi?
Posted 9 years ago on Aug. 3, 2014, 4:26 p.m. EST by DouglasAdams
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Search for him on the Internet. Sgt Tahmooressi was driving a truck loaded with all of his possessions, including a few guns, when he crossed the border. Before he could get back on the right track the Mexican military quickly surrounded him. He declared that he had the weapons and he went to jail.
The Marine sergeant and Afghanistan war veteran jailed in Mexico since April 1 on charges he entered Mexico with illegal firearms will remain behind bars south of the border at least until August, following a court hearing in Tijuana Wednesday.
I thought the Mexican government had released him months ago. He was off the radar. No headlines anymore.
The real mystery is how the Mexican military tracked 1 American driver entering their country accidentally while thousands of children from Central America travel across the entire country from the southern tip to the Rio Grande without being intercepted by Mexican authorities.
Free Bradley Manning
Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in WikiLeaks case
Chelsea Manning had the courage to stand up to the biggest,meanest bully this world has ever known.All by herself.She is likely to remain what she is now-the most admirable person of her generation.Hopefully she will be freed at the first possible opportunity.She would have been given the Nobel Peace Prize if there was any f'n justice in this world.Sweet Justice-hard to find!
manning is a human being like us
Agreed.An excellent human being.VQP.
Mother Jones reports on the 70000 children gathering at the Mexican border with US:
Although some have traveled from as far away as Sri Lanka and Tanzania , the bulk are minors from Mexico and from Central America's so-called Northern Triangle—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, which together account for 74 percent of the surge . Long plagued by instability and unrest, these countries have grown especially dangerous in recent years: Honduras imploded following a military coup in 2009 and now has the world's highest murder rate . El Salvador has the second-highest, despite the 2012 gang truce between Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. Guatemala, new territory for the Zetas cartel, has the fifth-highest murder rate; meanwhile, the cost of tortillas has doubled as corn prices have skyrocketed due to increased American ethanol production (Guatemala imports half of its corn) and the conversion of farmland to sugarcane and oil palm for biofuel.
http://www.motherjones.com/print/252671
Is it Mexico’s fault? Yes. This breakdown of territorial integrity should have been brought before the Organization of American States, The United Nations General Assembly, and UN Security Council.
What is the point of having a police force, a President, a legislature, a judiciary and a military?
The Mexican authorities are very effective at jailing Americans that enter Mexico with weapons, but totally overwhelmed by bands of children riding the railroad, the drug cartel, and foreign nationals they don’t know are in their country.
Is Mexico a friendly nation or not? In the United States the people have a right to bear arms. The Mexican government does not seem interested in changing their gun laws to accommodate Americans who accidentally brought their weapons with them across the border.
The US Congress is in a stalemate over immigration reform to accommodate illegal aliens, who happen to be mostly Mexicans. The Congress could sue the President over his use of executive orders to circumvent checks by Congress.
In June 2014 North Korea announced the detention of Jeffrey Edward Fowle, who it claims is an American citizen. According to the official state news agency, Fowle is accused of “committing acts inconsistent with the purpose of a tourist visit.” Fowle would be the third American now being held by North Korea.
This troubling trend comes as the North Korean government is growing increasingly desperate to grab attention from the outside world. The Americans are likely being held as bargaining chips by the violent, attention-starved regime in order to seize attention or demand concessions.
North Korea’s usual methods of getting attention have experienced diminishing returns, and it may have decided to start keeping hostages. To get them out, Washington might have to play Pyongyang’s game.
Little or nothing is known about Jeffrey Edward Fowle—if that is his real name. We do know, however, that North Korea has held nine Americans since 2009. Most have been released, but recently North Korea has begun keeping Americans.
North Korea currently holds two other Americans. Kenneth Bae, an American missionary of Korean descent, was detained in November 2012 for allegedly trying to bring down the government. Bae was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor in a work camp and is reported to be in deteriorating health.
Two months ago, Pyongyang said it had detained Matthew Todd Miller, for “a gross violation of its legal order.” Little is known about Miller, who, according to North Korea, reportedly tore up his visa and demanded asylum.
Most countries would simply deport foreigners and be done with it. Not North Korea. Robert Kelly, associate professor for political Science and diplomacy at South Korea’s Busan University, told The Daily Beast, “North Korea has a history of extraordinarily unconventional bargaining tactics. It violates the most basic norms of international relations to pursue advantage, which is a major reason why North Korea is considered so dangerous.”
Last December, Harry Devert, a 32-year-old New Yorker quit his job, packed his bags and took off on an adventure by motorcycle, chronicling his exploits through the Americas on A New Yorker Travels , his blog.
On Jan. 25, he vanished without a trace after checking out of a bed and breakfast in Michoacán, Mexico. He went missing in a region where fighting has broken out between a powerful drug cartel and local vigilantes, and his final text messages referenced the danger
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20788676,00.html# .
What does Mexico gain by imprisoning Americans that brought weapons into Mexico believing that they had the right to bear arms in Mexico?
For almost three years residents of Allende, close to the Mexican border with Texas , harboured a dreadful secret. In 2011 the town of 27,000 people suffered a violent attack by the Zetas, Mexico’s most brutal drug gang. Driven by a thirst for vengeance against two local men whom the gangs believed had betrayed them, mobs of Zetas drove into town, rounded up their extended families and friends—totalling hundreds of people—and abducted them at gunpoint. They then drove bulldozers through their houses, and mortared or set fire to them.
http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21604162-many-thousands-disappeared-mexicos-drug-war-government-should-do-more-find
At the same time thousands of Central American children are running amok toward the US border as if nothing unusual is happening.
Last week, local police near the town of La Union located a motorcycle with a VIN number that matched Devert’s green Kawasaki. Alongside the bike was a dismembered man’s body in two plastic bags. La Union is about 40 miles from the tourist port city of Zihuatanejo in the troubled state of Guerrero.
According to Devert’s family, he was leaving a bed-and-breakfast in a small town in the state of Michoacán, near Mexico’s monarch butterfly sanctuary, before he vanished. The state border between Michoacán and Guerrero is often patrolled by citizen militias called autodefensas, often resulting in violent confrontations with local drug gangs, such as the Knights Templar.
More than 20 million US citizens traveled to Mexico in 2013, according to US government data. The State Department frequently updates its travel warning on Mexico, including the region shared by Michoacán and Guerrero, where it lays out specifics on the local dangers.
https://news.vice.com/article/dismembered-body-found-in-mexico-is-missing-us-traveler-harry-devert
The mother of Harry Devert said Saturday on Facebook that DNA testing has confirmed a body found in Mexico earlier this month is her son's.
Devert grew up in New Rochelle and graduated from Pelham Memorial High School in 1999. Devert traveled extensively and last was heard from Jan. 25 while on a motorcycle journey through the Mexican state of Michoacan, a region largely controlled by drug traffickers. In one of his last text messages he told his girlfriend he had been escorted "out of some area it was too dangerous for me to be" and intended to meet a second escort on his way toward the coastal town of Zihuatanejo.
In a post on the Facebook page Help Find Harry, Ann Devert said the latest DNA test, using a cigarette he had smoked, indicated the body found was 99.99 percent certain to be his.
"There is no doubt this is Harry, my beloved son," she wrote. "Harry whose life was filled with delight, Harry whose boundless joy grew from the good times he shared with you, his friends, his companions, his allies, his heart. Harry carried each of us in his vast heart. And because there is a place for Harry in each of our own hearts, because that place is Harry's still, Harry is alive because YOU are alive. "ALIVE!, Ma!!!" he would say to me. "How great is that?!!"
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/2014/07/26/harry-deverts-mother-says-remains/13212691/
It is difficult for the U.S. State Department to quantify how many arrests are due to accidental crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, a spokeswoman told CNN, but Andrew Tahmooressi's case is not all that unique.
In 2012, former Marine Jon Hammar was on his way to a surfing trip with friends when he was arrested while carrying an antique shotgun across the Mexican border checkpoint in Brownsville, Texas.
A former U.S. Marine who languished for more than four months in a Mexican prison on a questionable gun charge was on his way to spending Christmas with his family Friday after U.S. politicians intervened for his release.
Jon Hammar, 27, was released from a facility in the border town of Matamoros, just across from Brownsville, Texas, said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida.
"These past few months have been an absolute nightmare for Jon and his family, and I am so relieved that this whole ordeal will soon be over," the congresswoman said in a statement. She represents the family's South Florida district.
U.S. consular officials met Hammar at the prison and escorted him to the border, where he was reunited with members of his family, U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.
It was August when Hammar, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, crossed the border on his way to Costa Rica. He was going to go surfing with a fellow veteran and stopped in Matamoros to get gas, his family said.
What is unique is that the Mexican authorities allowed thousands of unaccompanied Central American children to enter Mexico to enter the US illegally.
Mexico is very corrupt.
http://www.transparency.org/country#MEX
Don't rule out the possibility that the Central American children bribed the Mexican authorities for passage to the US border.
guns are illegal in Mexico
they ought to release him though
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
This exposes corruption on the Mexican side of the border. A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high-level cartel figures had been arrested. The Mexican authorities may have let the cartel leaders get away.
Guns tracked by the ATF have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexico–United States border, and the scene where United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed December 2010.
Imagine thousands of children from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador trek across the entire length of Mexico from the Guatemala border to the US border legally or illegally. No one takes responsibility for them until they try to enter the USA.
Woodstock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3SjqGfe-yM