U.S. Begins free flights for entrants

Program aims to stem repeat border crossings
By Michael Marizco
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The first Mexican illegal border crossers deported back to Mexico City under a new repatriation program left from Tucson International Airport Monday afternoon, filling a commercial airliner with 138 passengers.

Under the Department of Homeland Security's Interior Repatriation Program, illegal entrants can return on future flights to either Mexico City or Guadalajara. From there, they are bused to their hometowns.

Officials from Mexico and the United States met at the Border Patrol's Tucson air operations hangar to announce the launch of the $13 million program. It will operate until Sept. 30, the end of the agency's fiscal year. Then the department and the Mexican government will evaluate it and determine future plans.

The program is designed to try to break the cycle of people caught in the Arizona desert quickly making another attempt to get into the United States illegally after being deported, said Randy Beardsworth, director of operations for Homeland Security's Border and Transportation Security division.

Beardsworth said a "high" number of people repeatedly try to cross the border illegally, but he did not know how many. Andrea Zortman, a spokeswoman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said Monday that recidivism data would not be provided because the agency does not want it made public.

The repatriation program was agreed to by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Mexican Secretary of the Interior Santiago Creel in February. Creel insisted during negotiations that the program be voluntary. That means illegal entrants can still choose to be driven back to the border.

Mexican consular officials will interview and show a videotape on how the program works to each illegal entrant who is apprehended, said Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexico's undersecretary for North American affairs. Each person, Gutierrez stressed, has the right to refuse to be flown home. "At any point in time, they can decide not to enter the program," he said.

The United States also is working to ensure the program stays voluntary.

"If the entire family does not wish to participate, then no one in the family will be eligible," wrote Roger Maier, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in a news release about the program.

No border crossers will be handcuffed or restrained on the flights unless they pose a threat to either passengers or the pilot, Beardsworth said. About 30 of Monday's passengers were considered at high risk of dying in the desert if they attempted a second crossing, said Andy Adame, a spokesman with the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. They included single women with children and the elderly.

With more than 393,000 illegal entrants apprehended since Oct. 1 in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector through Sunday, consulate offices in Tucson, Nogales and Douglas are adding staff members to help with the program, said Juan Manuel Calderón Jaimes, the Mexican consul in Tucson.

Mexicana Airlines holds the contract for the repatriation program, Beardsworth said. He did not have an estimated cost for each illegal entrant in the program.

The program is designed to break a long-standing practice of having deportees being met at the Nogales Port of Entry by cabdrivers who offer them rides to the city's bus station. That's where many of them buy a one-way ticket back to Altar, Sonora. The town, about four hours southwest of Tucson, has served as a staging point for hundreds of thousands of people preparing to cross the border into Arizona illegally. From Altar, vans shuttle soon-to-be illegal entrants to Sasabe, Sonora, where they cross again.

The new program follows a more controversial one in which border officials returned 5,600 illegal border crossers caught in Arizona to Mexico through border ports in Texas. That program was not voluntary for the entrants.

The so-called lateral repatriation program, which lasted about three weeks in September, was designed to move the crossers far from their smugglers and reduce their chances of re-crossing the border. Immigrant-rights groups said the program was expensive and ineffective, and simply delayed migrants.

Robin Hoover, president of Humane Borders, a group that puts water in the desert for illegal crossers, said he has concerns about the new program.

"Overall, I would say this is a ridiculous way to approach this problem," he said. "It uses a phenomenal amount of resources and achieves little."

He conceded the program could help some immigrants.

"It may actually save a few lives, and we have to give them credit for that," he said.