Mexico sending Cuban refugees home to cut violent route to U.S.

Mexico sending Cuban refugees home to cut violent route to U.S.
By Julie Watson | The Associated Press
December 5, 2008

MEXICO CITY - Mexico is sending Cuban refugees home for the first time
under a new accord aimed at cutting off an increasingly violent
human-trafficking route to the United States, an official said Thursday.

Before Mexico signed the agreement with Cuba in October, authorities
rarely sent refugees back to the communist nation.

The Cubans were being deported from the resort city of Cancun, said Luis
Alberto Molina, an immigration official in Quintana Roo state, where
Cancun is located. Molina said he could not give further details.

An Associated Press photographer in Cancun saw about 60 refugees
boarding two buses early Thursday; some shouted they were being sent to
Cuba. A Cuban Embassy official said he had no information but was
looking into the matter.

It has become hard for Cuban refugees to dodge the U.S. Coast Guard at
sea and reach Florida to qualify for U.S. residency. So in recent years,
they increasingly have headed for Mexico, often to the coast near
Cancun, then over land to Texas.

Until now, Cubans were detained briefly in Mexico, then given 10- to
30-day exit orders. That allowed them to move on to Texas, where all
that is required of Cuban refugees are identity documents and medical
and background checks before they are allowed to stay in America.

However, Mexico has become frustrated with the migrations as violent
traffickers increasingly have become involved in moving Cubans across
the country.

Several Cuban-Americans thought to be involved in smuggling have been
killed in recent years in or around Cancun, about 120 miles southeast of
Cuba.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-flamexcuba1205sbdec05,0,7756536.story