By IANS/EFE,
Mexico City : Mexico’s migration agency said it has fired 121 officials for failing to adhere to the principles of “legality, honour, fairness, impartiality and efficiency”.
Battered by scandals, the agency, INM, recently embarked on a housecleaning aimed at ferreting out corrupt, abusive and incompetent agents and supervisors.
The dismissals affected personnel at regional offices in the capital and in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Sonora, Tamaulipas and Veracruz, the INM said.
All of the positions left vacant by the purge will be quickly filled, the agency said.
The INM’s Friday announcement came the same day that President Felipe Calderon met with leaders of groups devoted to protecting the rights of Mexican and Central American migrants.
“Of course we have defended migrants, of course we are cleaning up the INM, we have put immigration officials in prison,” the president told the activists.
An estimated 150,000 undocumented Central Americans a year cross Mexico with hopes of slipping across the border into the US.
The harsh journey is made more dangerous by predatory Mexican immigration officials and drug-cartel gunmen.
Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission said that at least 11,333 migrants were kidnapped during the period April-September 2010.