Immigrants Flock to Mexico on Way to U.S.

M E X I C O   C I T Y, June 27 -- With would-be immigrants willing to pay as much as $50,000 to get to America, the smuggling of humans is a growing business in Mexico, U.S. and Mexican officials say.

The thousands who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexican border every day are not just from Mexico and Latin America, but from as far as Eastern Europe, India and China.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service announced today that a two-week international antismuggling operation had caught nearly 8,000 would-be immigrants on their way to the United States, from 39 different countries. More than half were stopped at the Mexican border.

Last year, Mexico deported 152,000 people who had entered the country illegally trying to get to the United States. This year, figures are up by 35 percent, Mexican officials say.

Criminal gangs can make as much money smuggling people across the border as they do smuggling drugs, according to Hipolito Acosta, director of the INS' Mexico City office.

Stranded in Mexico

Officials say foreign smugglers often tell their charges the Mexican border is the best way into America — and then leave them stranded in Mexico.

"They offer to put them in contact with somebody in Mexico. They sell the notion that Mexicans know every little hole to cross the border," said Mexico's national security adviser, Adolpho Aguilar Zinzer.

Last year, 136 Iraqi Christians were dumped by their smugglers in a Tijuana hotel. The Iraqis, who said they were fleeing religious persecution by Saddam Hussein's government, attracted media coverage and were eventually allowed to enter the United States and apply for political asylum.

But most are not so lucky. They are caught and taken to detention centers before being deported to their home countries.

At one detention center near Mexico City, 400 people were being held recently, from nearly 40 countries.

One of them, 27-year-old Lu Lee said she had paid a smuggler $2,000 for her trip from China. Another, Bovin Kaehia endured a two and half month trip from India after his family was killed in an earthquake. Both will be returning home.