Flights home begin for illegal immigrants found in Arizona desert

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Whats to stop them when they get a free ride home. If I visit Mexico will Mexico pay for my trip back? Ya, yet Mexico cries that we're such a cruel country. Mexico is our enemy, that's a fact!!!


Flights home begin for illegal immigrants found in Arizona desert
The eighth annual Mexican Interior Repatriation Program will feature one flight a day instead of two and is expected to cost the U.S. government about $10 million.
Under the voluntary program, non-criminal Mexican illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol in Arizona are offered free flights to Mexico City. From there, they are given bus passes to return to their hometowns.
The goal of the annual summer initiative is to prevent illegal immigrants from trying to cross the border again in the hopes of saving lives during the scorching summer months when hundreds die each year in Arizona.
“Without this program, many of these migrants would perish in the desert,” said Tom Homan, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deputy executive assistant director.
The U.S. government has spent $85.8 million to fly more than 116,000 people home since the program began in 2004.
But there's no way to know if the program has achieved its goal of saving lives because there are no measures in place to evaluate it, found a July 2010 Government Accountability Office report.
The Border Patrol's Tucson and Yuma Sectors are the only ones conducting this program.
This year’s program will run for 80 days with the last flight leaving on Sept. 28. That’s the length the program has run for most years, but fewer than last year when it lasted 120 days.
Officials decided to offer one flight a day this year due to a significant decrease in apprehensions in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector. The fiscal year 2010 apprehensions were down by 57 percent from the 2004 figure, Border Patrol figures show.
The program is expected to cost the U.S. government between $9 - $11 million this year, Homan said. That’s less than the average yearly cost of the program and less than the $14.8 million spent in 2010.
Despite this program, Border Patrol rescue efforts and other live-saving programs run by non-governmental organizations, border deaths in Arizona have not decreased in the last decade in Arizona.
More than 2,100 illegal border crossers have been found dead in Arizona's desert in the last decade, with the yearly death toll hovering around 200 a year. The 249 bodies found in calender year 2010 were a record.
The tally this year is behind that record-setting pace. The 82 border deaths since Jan. 1 are the fewest at this date since 2003, when there were 79 border deaths through the date, the Arizona Daily Star's border-death database shows. Through July 5, 2010, there had been 124 bodies recovered.

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/news/local/bord...#ixzz1RpYYM7iM

[REWHBLCAIN]

I agree, the are our enemy!

[Rim05]

I never wish anyone to die because it will happen one day.
My thoughts about those who perish in the desert is, perhaps they are too ignorant to live. Sorry, but I know not to walk down the free way.

[Twoller]

How do we handle this problem? If we give them a bus ride, they can get off any time the bus stops and that may not be inside Mexico. But airplane rides are too expensive. How about if we catch them, they get a prison bus ride back, but if they turn themselves in voluntarily, then they get a plane ride. That's amnesty I can get behind. Turn yourself in and we don't lock you up for being in the country illegally.

[REWHBLCAIN]

Let them swim home.

Originally Posted by Twoller

How do we handle this problem? If we give them a bus ride, they can get off any time the bus stops and that may not be inside Mexico. But airplane rides are too expensive. How about if we catch them, they get a prison bus ride back, but if they turn themselves in voluntarily, then they get a plane ride. That's amnesty I can get behind. Turn yourself in and we don't lock you up for being in the country illegally.

[wetibbe]

This applies to Mexican nationals only, not OTM's.

Many crossers are from other countries.