Martín Méndez Pineda thought the US would protect him after months of threats, but instead found conditions worse than what he was aiming to escape

'They treat everyone like criminals': US asylum fails reporter fleeing Mexico

When Mexican journalist Martín Méndez Pineda walked across the border bridge to El Paso in February, he thought he would finally be safe.

After months of threats and harassment from corrupt police officers, which forced him to abandon his job and family in Acapulco, Méndez sought asylum in the US.

The 26-year-old reporter thought the US would protect him, given the unprecedented wave of deadly violence against the press in Mexico, which the country’s government seems unable or unwilling to curtail. He was wrong.

Méndez was detained for more than a hundred days in overcrowded custody centres, shackled like a criminal and subjected to hateful taunts from security guards.

'Why must I live in fear?' Mexico shaken after yet another journalist murdered Read more

Eventually, he abandoned his asylum claim and returned to Mexico after he was twice denied bail in the US and told that he faced at least another year held in grim conditions.

“The guards didn’t care why I was there, what I was running from, they treat everyone like criminals. I couldn’t take it,” Méndez told the Guardian.

“Of course I was scared [to return], but believe me, it was unbearable.”

He was right to be scared. Méndez was dropped off on Mexican soil less than 24 hours after veteran journalist Javier Valdez was gunned down in broad daylight in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

Valdez, 50, was an award winning journalist who fearlessly reported on Mexico’s drug wars from the home turf of one of its most powerful groups: Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel.

Valdez was the sixth journalist murdered in Mexico this year, confirming its inglorious ranking as the most dangerous country in the western hemisphere for press. More than 100 journalists have been killed in the country since 2000, and 20 others have disappeared.

At least 10 have claimed asylum in the US over the past decade, according to Reporters Without Borders (RWB).



But Méndez is the first to be refused bail in what campaigners fear could set a dangerous precedent amid America’s increasingly hostile stance against migrants and refugees.

“Refusing Martín bail marks a new political position under the new president. It’s very regrettable and worrying because this should be a question of human rights and humanitarian support, not the politics of Trump,” said Balbina Flores of RWB, which campaigned for Méndez’s release.

Mendez’s hometown, Acapulco – in the southern state of Guerrero – once attracted Hollywood’s most glittering stars to its casinos and beaches. Now it’s ranked one of the most violent cities in Mexico.

Méndez worked on the local daily Novedad Acapulco, covering breaking news and the police.

His ordeal was triggered not by a corruption exposé or reports on the drug war, but a seemingly ordinary traffic incident. On the 22 February 2016, he went to the scene of an accident involving a police truck.

“Instead of helping the injured passengers, the police were abusing them,” said Méndez. “I started taking photographs when they grabbed a wounded man and pushed him against the wall. That’s when the problem began.”

Officers took his camera and ID card, before roughing him up and ordering him to leave. The police were part of paramilitary squadron inaugurated by president Enrique Peña Nieto in 2014.

Méndez was shaken up but published the story the following day,on the police abuse he had witnessed.

The threatening phone calls started immediately, followed by harassment in the streets. He was told to take down the article, or suffer the consequences.

A couple of weeks later several armed men came to his home, pointed a gun at his face, and warned him to be quiet.

By now terrified, Méndez moved to another city in Guerrero, but the intimidating calls continued. He changed his number and moved to across country finding odd jobs to keep afloat, but the assailants kept phoning him.

“I realized there was no place in Mexico where they wouldn’t find me. That’s why I decided to seek asylum in the US,” said Méndez.

Méndez was held in three different detention centres over four months including the West Texas Detention Facility one in Sierra Blanca – known by detainees as el gallinero (the chicken coop).

There, about 100 men – including Africans, Iraqis, Central Americans and Mexicans – were crammed into quarters designed to hold 60. According to Méndez, it was infested with mold, rats and snakes, and the food – typically oat gruel with soya pellets – was inedible.

On one occasion, during a move, Méndez was shackled with a chain fastened tightly around his midriff for 26 hours.

“The guards screamed at us with disgust, they treated us like rubbish. You don’t know how much the people are suffering in there,” he said.

US immigration courts are buckling amid a backlog of 600,000 cases nationwide. Meanwhile more than 400 undocumented migrants are being detained every day – 38% higher than last year.

When Méndez finally appeared before a judge in early May, he was told the next hearing wouldn’t be until August. He broke down. “I couldn’t take it, I agreed to be repatriated.”

'Journalists are being slaughtered' – Mexico's problem with press freedom Read more

Méndez cannot go home to Acapulco and the Guardian is withholding his current whereabouts for protection.

“I don’t think I can ever go back, or at least not for years. Right now I just need a job, any job; I’ll probably end up in a clothes store.”

He wants to get back to reporting but without local contacts, it’s a struggle.

Amid mounting international condemnation about the killing of journalists with impunity, Peña Nieto was stirred to condemn the murder of Valdez and promised to improve press protection.

But like many journalists, Méndez is skeptical anything will change.

“It’s a total lie, it’s what the government says every time a journalist is murdered but nothing ever changes,” said Méndez. When he was threatened, he said, he reported the intimidation to a human rights group but not the Mexican authorities.

“Why would I? Those who go to the authorities are the first ones to die.”