Back in October she was being hailed as brave for being the youngest female police chief in Mexico, a post that was left unfilled since the violent death of her predecessor in 2009. Now the 21-year-old Marisol Valles Garcia realizes that she was a sitting duck in her violent town Praxedis G. Guerrero. She says that she was not going to take on the drug cartel instead she would focus on community rebuilding.
The Mexican police are painting her as a coward and that she has been fired from her post as police chief when she didn’t show up for work this morning. City officials claim that Valles Garcia was only traveling across the border for a brief stay to get her young son medical attention but she did not return this morning as she had said. And for the city it was grounds for termination.
Why would she be coming to United States for medical attention? Americans who cannot afford cross the border for affordable healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Valles Garcia may have difficulty making an asylum case, though because U.S. Immigration doesn’t granting asylum for well-being nor drug violence death threat cases. She would have to show that she was be persecuted because of race, religion, nationality, political views or membership in a particular social group.
Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, A Chihuahua state human rights official told El Pais that Valles Garcia received death threats over the phone before fleeing. He said a local government employee accompanied her to the international bridge that crosses into Fort Hancock, Texas on Thursday. Her plan, according to the official, was to seek asylum.
This isn’t the first time that drug cartels threaten the life of women. They spare no one. In Bravos, Mexico 28-year-old Érika Gándara was given the chief of police job by her uncle, the mayor, after no one applied. She hasn’t been seen since December. Hermila García, appointed police chief of Meoqui, was killed in November after only a month on the job.
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