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More migrants coming from other nations
Many caught at border don't appear in court

Louie Gilot
El Paso Times

The Border Patrol calls them OTMs -- Other Than Mexicans.

They are Brazilians, Central Americans and migrants from other countries and regions that sneak into the United States, mostly through Mexico. Their tales of riding on top of trains and walking through jungles for months -- getting attacked by thieves and wild animals -- are harrowing. And their numbers are growing.

Jose Antonio Alarcon, 34, of Guatemala, ran into bandits last week as he tried to cross from Anapra, Mexico, into Sunland Park. The assailants stole $150 from Alarcon's pocket and beat him so severely they broke two fingers in his right hand and cut half of an ear off. Alarcon received thick, black stitches at Juárez General Hospital and is recovering at an immigrant shelter near the Zaragoza Bridge in Juárez.

"My head hurts all the time now," the diminutive man said.

When asked whether his wife and children know what happened to him, emotions overwhelmed him and he turned away to hide tears. He hasn't told them, he said, and it's too late to go home, empty handed and having depleted their savings.

Mexican nationals still make up 96 percent of all undocumented immigrants caught in the El Paso sector, but OTM numbers have jumped 225 percent in the past five years, from 1,393 in 2000 to 4,527 in 2005. The total number of apprehensions has decreased by 1.45 percent, from 115,758 in 2000 to 114,076 in 2005.

Along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, the capture of OTMs went up 175 percent last year.

Unlike the hundreds of Mexican immigrants who are deported every week in El Paso, these migrants can't just be dropped off at the Paso del Norte Bridge and told to walk back into Mexico.

Many are simply released into the United States -- a fact that some see as an alarming breach of homeland security.

"The exponential growth in the apprehension of OTM illegal entrant aliens and, in most cases, their subsequent release, is becoming a major source of clogging and friction for the removal process," Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said during testimony before U.S. Senate subcommittees on terrorism and immigration in July.

'Good people'

OTMs in El Paso are mostly Central Americans and Brazilians, but there are a growing number of Burmese, Indonesians and Africans, immigration lawyers reported.

Most of them are "good people," said Sister Liliane Alam, executive director at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. They come to work or to be reunited with family members.

But there are also migrants from "special-interest" countries, a government classification for countries that have harbored terrorists, such as Eritrea, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iran and Iraq.

Nationally, Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora said, 644 migrants from "special-interest" countries were apprehended by his agency last year. Border Patrol officials declined to give numbers for El Paso.

Over the years, some cases have raised alarm.

Algerian Samir Abdoun, for instance, was caught entering California from Mexico with a French passport in 1998, according to federal court records. He was released and failed to show at his 1999 asylum hearing. He wasn't arrested until Sept. 22, 2001, after immigration agents learned he had met for coffee several times with two of the hijackers that took part in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Abdoun was deported last year.

Catch and release

Undocumented immigrants who are convicted criminals or who are on a criminal or terrorism watch list are jailed.

"We will not deny space to anyone who poses a threat to public safety or national security," said Leticia Zamarripa, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in El Paso.

But because of overcrowding in immigration detention centers -- only 20,000 beds nationwide, 800 in El Paso -- many are released on their own recognizance with a notice to appear before an immigration judge within six months.

The notice serves as a traveling document, and migrants often leave town to meet family members.

About 29 percent of immigrants -- or about 1,500 -- who got released on their promise to appear, including 142 Mexicans, didn't come back this year for their court date in El Paso, higher than the 22 percent national average, the Executive Office of Immigration Review reported.

"You may never find them again," said Kathleen Walker, an El Paso lawyer and the first vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Among the migrants who failed to appear in El Paso were a few from special-interest countries, including one Afghan, one Iraqi and one Pakistani.

The Justice Department reported that smugglers have instructed undocumented immigrants to take advantage of the so-called "catch and release" practice and claim asylum when they enter the United States.

"Information is spreading about that. They come with that hope" of being released and given travel papers, said the Rev. Francisco Pellizzari, director of Casa Del Migrante, a shelter in Juárez. Pellizzari said his Honduran guests have increased by 15 percent or 20 percent since last year.

Bracelets, home visits

The federal government is testing new programs to "reverse the historically abysmal rate of compliance with hearing dates and removal orders," Victor X. Cerda, the acting director of Detention and Removal Operations for ICE, told a congressional panel in April.

Pilot programs started last year in eight cities, none of them El Paso, include tracking ankle bracelets, telephonic voice recognition and a parole-type program that includes home visits and weekly reporting. In Laredo and Tucson, the government is using Expedited Removal for OTMs, a program that allows their deportation in as little as two weeks.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.co, 546-6131.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.