Latin American Herald Tribune - Two Daily Flights to Carry Deportees from Arizona to Mexico
MEXICO CITY – Mexican authorities, in coordination with those in the United States, will use two daily flights between the two countries to repatriate illegal immigrants captured near the mutual border in Arizona who voluntarily agree to take part in the program, officials said Sunday.
The 2009 Voluntary Repatriation Program, which started up two days ago and will run until Sept. 28, is designed to guarantee a “dignified, safe and orderly” return to their country for Mexican immigrants captured in the Arizona desert.
The flights will depart from Tucson and will have Mexico City as their final destination, the Foreign Relations Secretariat, Government Secretariat and National Migration Institute, or INM, said in a joint statement.
Before boarding the planes, officials assigned to the Mexican consulates in Nogales and Yuma will conduct interviews with the detainees to ensure that the repatriation process is carried out properly.
Any illegal Mexican immigrant who is intercepted or who desires it may board the flights, be flown to the Mexican capital and from there be transported to his or her hometown “at no cost,” the statement said.
The aim of the project is to “reduce the loss of human life during the period of greatest heat in the desert and to combat, at the same time, the organized criminal networks that dedicate themselves to the traffic ... of people in that border zone,” the statement added.
The last stage will be carried out by INM personnel, who will provide “support and medical assistance to the countrymen who require it, with special attention to minors and other vulnerable groups.”
The undocumented migrants who do not take part in the voluntary program will remain in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities, who will carry out their deportations according to U.S. regulations.
The counterpart to the Mexican authorities is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Since the voluntary repatriation programs were begun by Arizona in 2004, 82,341 Mexican immigrants have been repatriated in this way.
In 2008, 18,465 undocumented migrants took part in the program, with the bulk of them coming from the central states of Puebla and Mexico, Oaxaca and Guerrero in the south and Michoacan in the west.
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