Reyes facilitates funding of Mexico's enemy

NY Times:

A Mexican citizen who is a distant relative of a prominent congressman from Texas was kidnapped last week in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and then released within three days after the victim’s immediate family paid ransom of $32,000.

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, helped the Mexican authorities pursue the case, and an internal ICE memorandum, much of it confirmed in interviews with American officials, says the congressman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, facilitated the release.

That has led families of other victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez, a forbidding city with warring drug cartels and rampant murder rates, to say that Mr. Reyes, whose district is directly across the border, has not been nearly so responsive to their requests for help.

...

“What is striking is how rapidly it was solved,” said Kent Paterson, who runs a border blog operated by New Mexico State University and says there are scores of unresolved cases of kidnapping of United States citizens along the border. “If you have money, clout and political connections, you can move things.”

Jaime Hervella, co-founder of the International Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons, based in El Paso, said of Mr. Reyes: “We had to go through extremes to get an appointment to see him, only after pressure in the media was too much. We had a 40-minute meeting, and it was like talking to my closet. Nothing came about.”

...


What is striking to me is how many of the complaints are about not getting help in funding the enemies of Mexico. There seems to be a complete failure to consider the implications of the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee using law enforcement to facilitate payment to a group that is terrorizing our ally Mexico.

If he could be coerced into helping get money to Mexico's enemy, what is stop him from providing government secrets to the enemy. This deals smells, but it is not because he did not help others get the same deal. The House ethics committee should be looking at this.

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