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Home countries frustrated as U.S. deports criminals
Influx creates challenges for residents, civic groups
—Antonio Olivo and Oscar Avila

February 9, 2009

JUAREZ, Mexico — When he crossed illegally into the U.S. in 2002, Cesar Sanchez didn't plan on stabbing a girlfriend's estranged husband eight times.

Yet there he was, a convicted murderer dropped at the Texas border last month—one less worry for U.S. officials but a source of concern for the cities in Central America receiving thousands of freed convicts.

"I crossed like so many others; for a dream," said Sanchez, 25, wondering how he'd make it back to his family in Veracruz. "And, then ..."

U.S. Immigration officials are escalating efforts to put some 450,000 illegal immigrants serving prison time in the U.S. on planes back home. In 2008, about 113,000 such convicts were deported.

But in the areas on the receiving end, some wonder whether the influx could in turn chase frustrated residents over the border.

"It's just one more variable that Juarez has to contend with," said Lucinda Vargas, director of a Juarez group trying to rescue a city gripped by warring drug cartels.

In El Salvador, where the number of criminal deportees rose 28 percent last year to 6,212, a group called Homies Unidos struggles to reform gang members flooding home, a factor in making that nation Latin America's most violent per capita.

In Guatemala, the influx taxes aid programs for returning countrymen.

After one plane of deportees landed in Guatemala City, disoriented men wandered over to a jobs booth.

Erick Maldonado, a top foreign ministry official, said his agency hopes to soothe the "bitterness" of deportees.

With 28,000 arriving last year, he said, "the more people come, the more social pressures we can expect."

www.chicagotribune.com