The Office of the Undersecretary for North America today inaugurated the fifth regional Mexican Civil Rights Advisory Group (MCRAG) in the United States. It will cover the West Coast, including California, Oregon and Washington. In addition to the national group, four regional MCRAGs have been created in Arizona (August 22); the Southeast (July 26); the Midwest (July 25); and Texas (July 2017). Four groups have launched in the last month, two of them this week.
These groups provide an institutional framework for working with civil rights groups to engage in high-impact litigation. MCRAGs are forums for experts to share their experience and knowledge and to leverage the resources of each party by finding additional areas of collaboration. The groups are an additional resource available to Mexico's consulates to help them defend Mexican communities.
In the MCRAGs, the participating organizations and Mexico's consuls deal with issues such as hate crimes and immigration sweeps. They also review the conditions at detention centers, and the recent changes made to US immigration policy, including expedited removals, family separation and the public charge issue, and the impact these have on our community in the US.
Mexico works with the MCRAGs to promote litigation that improves conditions for Mexicans and migrants when their rights have been infringed on.
To date, about 40 national, state and local organizations participate in the MCRAGs. They were created as part of the Mexican Migrant Assistance Strategy that is headed by the Undersecretary for North America to work together on high-impact litigation.
Additional groups will be created in the northwest region in the near future in order to have coverage across the entire United States.
