Immigration officials in Mexico have been reported to be torturing Central Americans and others in an effort to stop illegal aliens from coming into their country.

The Guardian reported that immigration activists say that Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migracion in Spanish) (INM) is conducting itself “like an unchecked police force” that is “systematically using torture against detainees.”

It also reported that native Mexicans are being detained and threatened with deportation as a result of an effort to crack down on illegal aliens migrating from Central America.

As part of that report, The Guardian cited Juan Menzez, a United Nations (UN) reporter who writes about torture. Mendez presented a report to the UN in March 2015 after touring Mexico. It reportedly revealed “beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, waterboarding, forced nudity and rape, as well as threats and insults.” At that time, it was reported that his account “links torture in Mexico to government efforts to combat the country’s drug cartels.”

The Guardian attributes the actions to slash immigration in Mexico to “be driven in part by political pressure and financial aid from the US.” The publication stated that President Barack Obama declared the surge of young illegal aliens in 2014 to be a “humanitarian crisis.”

Breitbart Texas Managing Editor Brandon Darby reported in June 2014 that he had obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) being housed by authorities in the U.S. He wrote, “Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil.”

Eighteen-year-old Alberto was reported by The Guardian to have been placed in a room with four agents where he was tortured. He was allegedly told that unless he signed paperwork admitting that he was Guatemalan, he would be killed. He was quoted as saying, “One pushed me, another was kicking my leg, and a third who was very fat gave me an electric shock here, on the back of my right hand.”

He said, “I really thought I was going to die.”

His two sisters, Esther Juarez (15), and Amy (24) were with him on a bus traveling to another place in Mexico to work as seasonal workers when immigration agents got on the bus to do a check. The Juarez sisters are from a tiny community in Chiapas in the southern region of Mexico.

The immigration officers demanded that they show their immigration papers, when they did, they were accused of lying about their citizenship and carrying false papers. The girls were reportedly told that they were going to be deported to Guatemala. The girls, who speak a Mayan language and only a very little Spanish, were taken to an immigration center.

The three family members were held by immigration officials for eight days before they were helped by a lawyer who got them released.

The clampdown, allegedly dubbed the “Southern Border Plan,” was reported to be responsible for the creation and implementation of these mobile immigration teams. This account detailed that while those patrolling “do not carry weapons, they often work closely with armed private security officers, police officers and soldiers.”

Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as an associate judge and prosecutor in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2