Last week, NM's Richardson called on Mexico to raze Las Chepas, a mostly abandoned outpost that's used as a staging area for illegal immigration and drug smuggling. "Mexico funds staging areas for illegals" has more on that and on Mexico's Grupo Beta:

Many of the Mexican aid stations are maintained by Grupo Beta, a Mexican governmentfunded humanitarian organization founded in the early 1990s. Driving through the desert regions south of the border in brightly painted orange trucks, Grupo Beta's job is to protect migrants along the border, not arrest them.

In April, Grupo Beta worked with the Mexican military and the Sonora State Preventive Police to move would-be illegal aliens out of the desert areas just south of the U.S. border to locations east and west of Naco, Ariz., to avoid the Minuteman Project volunteers holding a vigil on the border.

A branch of Mexico's National Migration Institute, Grupo Beta also helped pass out fliers warning migrants that the Minuteman volunteers, whom they described as "armed vigilantes," were waiting across the border to hurt them.

In addition to the aid stations, the Mexican government has distributed more than a million copies of a 32-page handbook advising migrants how to cross into the United States. The book, known as "Guia del Migrante Mexicano," or "Guide for the Mexican Migrant," contains tips on avoiding apprehension by U.S. authorities.

It goes on to discuss what are in effect the "American" branches of Grupo Beta: U.S. "human rights" groups that have set up similar aid stations on our side. The Presbyterian church is involved in one group. And, as part of our continuing struggle with government corruption:

Others have been placed, with permission, on property owned by Pima County, Ariz.; the National Park Service; the Bureau of Land Management; and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

For more on Pima County in a related context, see "Tucson: free educations for all!". For older Grupo Beta news, see "Mexico Arrests 42 [Government Employees] for Migrant Trafficking"