In one of the iconic buildings of Miami’s Brickell financial district, three young Mexican executives have opened an office to draw investors from their country and other parts of Latin America interested in finding a safe haven for their money.

East Coast Opportunity (ECO) group executives Mario Alonso, Emilio Braun Burillo and Iñaki Negrete have settled in a suite of offices in the Latitude building near Brickell Avenue and Southwest Seventh Street. They use money from foreign investors, mostly Mexicans, to buy distressed properties which are then refurbished, sold or rented.

ECO is one of a number of companies in U.S. cities offering services to a growing number of Mexican business owners and investors seeking safe places to invest beyond their country, which is being wracked by violence, chiefly in the northern states.

While most Mexican investors and executives are focused primarily on such U.S. border cities as El Paso and Houston in Texas or San Diego, there are groups interested in other U.S. cities such as Miami. The ECO executives, with experience in banking and marketing, said they have noticed a growing number of Mexican business owners or investors relocating to South Florida or trying to invest here.

“Miami is very important for us because we see it as the gateway to the United States for Latin America and Europe,” said Alonso. “It’s probably the second or third most important financial center in the United States. A lot of foreign money is coming here.”

There is no overall estimate on how much money has been invested locally by Mexican investors, but ECO executives said they manage about $30 million.

Nationally, the Commerce Department’s international trade administration said recently that Mexican direct investment in the United States reached more than $31 billion in 2008, compared to $7.7 billion in 2005.

Thousands of Mexicans, rich and poor alike, are leaving Mexico not only to find work in the United States as before, but also to seek shelter from growing violence and insecurity.

The number of asylum approvals for Mexicans and the number of visas for Mexican investors have risen since Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug trafficking cartels in December 2006. The fighting has left nearly 40,000 dead.

The number of visas granted to Mexican investors and treaty traders grew to more than 21,000 in fiscal year 2009 compared to less than 15,000 in 2007, according to figures published in the Homeland Security immigration yearbook.

Meanwhile, the number of Mexicans who have received asylum exceeded 250 in fiscal year 2009 compared with 133 in 2006, according to DHS and Executive Office for Immigration Review statistics.

Despite the violence, the Mexican economy is booming thanks to high oil prices, remittances from Mexicans in the United States and other countries, tourism and industrial activity.

Mexico’s 5.5 percent hike in gross domestic product last year is one of the main “engines” fueling investment abroad, ECO’s Negrete said.

Negrete, Alonso and Burillo said the increase in Mexican investment eventually will benefit the economies of Miami and other U.S. cities still reeling from the Great Recession.

Roberto Coronado, senior economist in El Paso for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, recently told the El Paso Times that the Mexican economy is one of the main drivers of El Paso’s economy.

Thousands of entrepreneurs and business owners in Ciudad Juarez, for example, have relocated to El Paso. That has led to the creation of new communities in areas east and west of downtown El Paso, where thousands of newly arrived refugees from across the border have resettled.

Felipe Millan, a prominent immigration lawyer in El Paso, told El Nuevo Herald recently that more than 50,000 residents have fled Ciudad Juárez to El Paso in the last three years.

In Miami, meanwhile, ECO executives, believe that South Florida is a magnet for Mexican investors interested in cities not yet saturated by Mexican entrepreneurs.

“Many Mexicans somehow already have planted seeds in this place,” Burillo said. “They have apartments on Fisher Island or Key Biscayne or in Brickell,” he added. “Every day more are coming.”