Migrants’ Advocate to Take Baja Human Rights Post

A migrant rights advocate and frequent critic of tighter U.S. border controls takes office today as official human rights ombudsman for Baja California, despite objections by rivals over the selection process.

Raul Ramirez Baena, who has directed a migrant aid center in Tijuana sponsored by the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, is to be sworn in as the attorney general for human rights in the state capital of Mexicali.

Ramirez, 50, said he intends to use the high-profile--though mainly ceremonial--post to spotlight what he and other critics contend is a deadly U.S. strategy that diverts illegal immigrants from urban areas, such as San Diego, to treacherous routes through mountains and desert terrain.

“The [U.S.] immigration policies are violations of human rights--most notably the right to life,” Ramirez said during an interview in the migrant aid office, whose walls are covered with posters marking rights observances worldwide.

Ramirez was named as the state’s independent rights advocate last week by the Baja California legislature amid noisy protests from some activists. Other contenders and some of their backers charged that lawmakers improperly whittled the list of 12 applicants to three finalists.

Some rights groups now refuse to recognize Ramirez, saying that he was chosen through back-room dealing as a way of granting a token spot in state government to his party, which holds only three of 25 seats in the legislature. The remaining seats are evenly divided between the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which dominates national politics, and the opposition National Action Party, which holds sway in Baja California.

“We and many of the groups in Mexicali do not recognize Ramirez as ombudsman because he was an accomplice to a process that’s a farce,” said Victor Clark Alfaro, a highly regarded Tijuana activist who was one of the applicants.

Ramirez is to replace Antonio Garcia Sanchez, whose three-year term is ending.

This selection of Ramirez took place the first time the legislature was fully in charge of choosing the human rights ombudsman, an independent post created in 1991. The ombudsman receives citizens’ complaints of abuse or shoddy treatment at the hands of government officials at the local, state or federal levels. The rights agency can investigate complaints, in some cases referring suspected criminal acts for prosecution, but lacks much legal clout beyond recommending corrective action.

Observers, however, credit the office with taking on police misconduct and fostering a greater willingness among ordinary citizens to step forward with complaints of official wrongdoing. The ombudsman’s office received 951 complaints statewide in the 12 months ending in October.

Ramirez said he would push for changes in the law to arm the office with the authority to impose fines or other sanctions as punishment for official wrongdoing.

In the meantime, Ramirez said, the advocate’s most potent weapon is the bully pulpit. He said he would launch a campaign to better acquaint Baja’s “vulnerable population”--women, gays, the elderly and the disabled--with their legal rights and would continue raising concerns about immigrants. As a Mexican official, he will have no say over U.S. policy but could monitor mistreatment of would-be immigrants by Mexican authorities south of the border.

Ramirez has been active in a binational network of activists who have criticized the U.S. border crackdown--the California portion of which is known as Operation Gatekeeper--on human rights grounds. Critics say that shoring up patrols in once porous urban zones pushes undocumented immigrants to risk their lives crossing elsewhere.

Fifty-eight Mexican nationals have died trying to enter California illegally since Oct. 1, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. The body of an immigrant was found last weekend in the desert mountains in Imperial County, and Border Patrol agents rescued five others who became stranded in Imperial County.

U.S. immigration officials blame unscrupulous smugglers who charge immigrants hundreds of dollars for passage but often abandon them along the border without food, water or proper clothing. U.S. authorities argue that they have taken pains to prevent tragedies by publicizing the perils of back-country crossings and providing agents with rescue gear.