SAN DIEGO — The U.S. government began flying Mexican deportees home on Tuesday in a two-month experiment aimed at relieving Mexican border cities overwhelmed with people ordered to leave the United States.
The flights will run twice a week from El Paso, Texas, to Mexico City until Nov. 29, at which time both governments will evaluate the results and decide whether to continue. The first flight left Tuesday with 131 Mexicans aboard.
The flights are not voluntary, unlike a previous effort from 2004 to 2011 to deport Mexicans arrested by the Border Patrol during Arizona's deadly summer heat.
The U.S. government will pay for the flights, and the Mexican government will pay to return people from Mexico City to their hometowns, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a news release. ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said Mexicans from that country's northern border states will not be eligible.
The experiment comes as Mexican cities along the U.S. border are grappling with large numbers of deportees who have no roots, few employment prospects and sometimes limited Spanish. Many are deported to cities that are among the hardest hit by organized crime in Mexico, particularly across the border from Texas in the state of Tamaulipas.
"The newly repatriated, often with no means to return home, are susceptible to becoming part of criminal organizations as a means of survival," Gustavo Mohar, Mexico's interior undersecretary for population, migration and religious affairs, said in a statement released by ICE.
ICE Director John Morton said the flights "will better ensure that individuals repatriated to Mexico are removed in circumstances that are safe and controlled."
ICE, which is managing the flights, said passengers will include Mexicans with criminal convictions in the United States and those who don't have any. They will be taken from throughout the United States to a processing center in Chaparral, N.M., before being put on flights at El Paso International Airport.
President Barack Obama's administration has made migrants with criminal convictions a top priority among the roughly 400,000 people of all nationalities who are deported each year. The Department of Homeland Security said nearly half of the 293,966 Mexicans deported in its last fiscal year had criminal convictions in the United States.
The policy has fueled concern in Mexican cities along the U.S. border that deportees are being victimized, turn to petty crime or are recruited by criminal gangs. In February, Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Mexican Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire announced plans for a pilot program to begin April 1 but negotiations delayed the start until Tuesday.
The Border Patrol will not participate in the experiment, which is called the Interior Repatriation Initiative, Navas said.
Under a previous effort, some Mexicans who were arrested by the Border Patrol in Arizona's stifling summer heat were offered a free flight to Mexico City, but they could refuse. The Mexican Interior Repatriation Program flights carried 125,164 passengers at a cost of $90.6 million from 2004 to 2011, or an average of $724 for each passenger, according to ICE.
The flights became a key piece of Border Patrol enforcement in Arizona as the agency moved to end its decades-old, revolving-door policy of taking migrants to the nearest border crossing to try again hours later.
Masterrogue666 posted at 8:38 am on Wed, Oct 10, 2012.
@ DavidNIchols: Why not blame those that are the ones responsible? Namely, those persons that come here ILLEGALLY in the first place? What about they take RESPONSIBILITY for THEIR ACTIONS?
They are the "bad" guys, because their actions are CRIMINAL.....
Masterrogue666 posted at 8:35 am on Wed, Oct 10, 2012.
"aimed at relieving Mexican border cities overwhelmed with people ordered to leave the United States" -- WHY?!!!! Does Mexico care about what it's citizens that are here ILLEGALLY cost the US taxpayer? I say bus them to the border, and boot them across!
Ateam1 posted at 6:46 am on Sun, Oct 7, 2012.
DavidNichols:Have you ever had to deal with the consequences of your actions? It appears you dont. You are trying to make a right out of a wrong and it's not working for me! The law is the law!
DavidNichols posted at 10:25 am on Sat, Oct 6, 2012.
"America is great because it is good, when it ceases to be good, it ceases to be great."
Alex De Tocqueville
With over Forty-two Thousand Hispanic "Human Beings" already lying Dead at the Harsh U.S. Mexico Border since the January 2008 start of the I.C.E. Deportation Program, which has Deported/Dumped Hundreds of Thousands of "Human Beings" at the Border with nothing, not even water into a known Drug War,to be killed, or to Die of exposure, I think flying them closer to their homes or Family members if they have any is more in keeping with True American Ideals, and "Good".
The Deportation/Incarceration of these Hard Working People is what has Crashed and Divided America.
The Deportations have persecuted Millions of People, ripped apart Families, tearing Parents from their legal Citizen Children.
January 2008 was also the start of the "Great Recession", the "Foreclosure Crisis", and our "New Ballooning National Deficit".
This is our I.C.E.'d Economy.
I.C.E. "Put the Car in the Ditch."
To: Good, and Brotherhood from Sea to shining Sea.
loose stool posted at 2:48 am on Wed, Oct 3, 2012.
We need to make them work on a chain gang to earn thier money to pay for the flight back or confiscate what ever they have.
devils66 posted at 9:45 pm on Tue, Oct 2, 2012.
I'm sure they'll be back by next week.
Bodacious posted at 3:33 pm on Tue, Oct 2, 2012.
"The U.S. government will pay for the flights"...Why?
These criminal invaders are Mexico's problem...let them deal with them. The more we overwhelm the Mexican border citys with Mexico's criminals the more Mexico will wake up and discourage instead of encourage the illegal parasites to invade our country in the first place.