Mexican citizen groups claim the US army is recruiting illegal immigrants from Mexico to send them to the war in Iraq.

According to Prensa Latina on Friday in Culiacan, the capital of the northern state Sinaloa, civil activist Ildefonso Ortiz Cabrera told reporters that US military officers use young men of Latin American origin to recruit for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ortiz Cabrera reported about his own experience in Phoenix, Arizona, where army recruiters suggested he go to a military base, instead he decided to return to El Burrion, his town in Sinaloa.

Many illegal Mexican immigrant families in the US have been persuaded to return to their places of origin, because of fear that their adolescent children are to be recurred to go to war.

It's commonly asserted in Mexico that the US military uses minorities, including Hispanics, as cannon fodder.

The governor of the Mexican state of Zacatecas recently made the astounding declaration that 70% of the US military is black and Hispanic - with 40% being of Mexican origin