12 cops arrested in Mexico massacre

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico — A dozen state police officers were being questioned Wednesday after their arrests in the killings of 19 people, including Guatemalan migrants, whose bodies were found shot and burned near the U.S. border late in January.

Tamaulipas state Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica announced Tuesday night that all 12 officers were in custody and face charges of homicide, abuse of authority and making false statements.

The killings revived memories of the gruesome 2010 massacre of 72 migrants near the town of San Fernando in the same gangridden state. Those killings were done by a drug cartel, while authorities say the Jan. 22 slayings were carried out by law enforcement.

“In the aforementioned acts of Jan. 22, at least 12 state police officers participated,” Barrios Mojica said.

The attorney general didn’t give a motive, though corrupt local and state police in Mexico are often in the pay of drug cartels.

The bodies were found piled in a charred pickup in Camargo, across the Rio Grande from Texas, in an area that has been bloodied for years by turf battles between the remnants of the Gulf cartel and the old Zetas cartel.

Another burned vehicle was found at the scene, and authorities say it had been seized by immigration officials in a raid that had detained 66 migrants on their way to the U.S.

On Wednesday, the National Immigration Institute announced it had fired eight immigration agents from the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon, apparently because they had seized the vehicle but let it go.

“These violations of the rights of migrants are absolutely unacceptable,” Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero said.