Thread: Mexico probes hijacking of Cuban group

June 19, 2008, 10:44PM

Mexico probes hijacking of Cuban group

Police suspect corrupt Mexican officials behind transportation to Texas border

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau

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MEXICO CITY — Mexican police are investigating the suspected involvement of corrupt immigration officials in the hijacking of a group of Cubans and their subsequent transportation to the Texas border.

The senior immigration official in Quintana Roo state was fired this week for alleged corruption.

Mexican authorities said the Cubans crossed Wednesday into the United States at Hidalgo, near McAllen, where U.S. authorities took them into custody.

The Border Patrol said it had no involvement in the case, and officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates the port of entry at Hidalgo, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would not confirm the Mexican account.

In a brief statement released Thursday evening, Lloyd Easterling, spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in Washington, said an "undisclosed number" of Cubans turned themselves in to border port authorities on Monday and Tuesday at a port of entry in Texas, declining to say whether it was Hidalgo.

Given forged documents

After processing them, border authorities turned the group over to immigration officials for health and background screenings, Easterling said. After the second screening, all the Cubans were released pending their immigration court cases except one, who was kept in detention for health reasons.

U.S. officials offered no further comment, citing detainees' privacy and an ongoing investigation.

The 18 Cubans were detained by the Mexican navy off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula near Cancun on June 6. They were being taken to an immigration detention facility in southernmost Chiapas state last week when their bus was hijacked by at least six armed men on a narrow rural road.

The Cubans told Mexican investigators in Texas that after being "rescued" by the smugglers they were taken to a house in Veracruz state and given forged travel documents bearing the seal of Mexico's immigration service, according to the Mexican attorney general's office.

The Cubans then traveled by bus to the Texas border, passing unimpeded through various army and immigration checkpoints, they told the Mexican officials.

Two Cuban residents of the United States were detained with the boat on which the migrants were captured and arraigned in Cancun. Although offered release on bail, the two asked not to be freed, the attorney general's office said. The men told officials they feared for their lives.

Revisiting policy

At least three Cubans, including two U.S. residents, have been murdered in the Cancun area in the past 11 months. Mexican authorities say the victims were likely involved in human smuggling from the communist island to the Yucatan Peninsula, which are separated by just 120 miles of sea.

Mexico has long served as a trampoline for U.S.-bound Cubans, as it has for undocumented immigrants from many countries. The U.S. government has said 11,000 Cubans crossed the U.S.-Mexican border in the 2007 fiscal year.

Nearly 1,300 Cubans have either been caught or surrendered to Mexican authorities so far this year, said Ana Theresa Aranda, Mexico's top immigration official. Last year, Mexico's immigration agency detained 3,300 Cubans, almost all of them temporarily, she said.

Under a binational agreement, Mexican authorities send the names of detained immigrants to Cuba, asking if they are "returnable" to the island because of criminal records or for other reasons.

If the Cuban government does not request the immigrants' return within 15 days, they are ordered to leave Mexico and given documents that allow their travel to do so, Aranda said.

Cuba has not requested the return of any of its citizens detained in Mexico this year, she said. Mexican and Cuban officials say the two countries are in talks to revise their immigration agreements, with a new round of talks scheduled for July in Havana.

San Antonio Express-News reporter Hernán Rozemberg contributed to this story.

dudley.althaus@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5847443.html

Jun 20, 4:54 PM EDT


Mexico police guard smuggling suspect

By JORGE DOMINGUEZ
Associated Press Write

CANCUN, Mexico (AP) -- Hundreds of police and military sharpshooters guarded an immigration detention center Friday in southern Mexico amid threats that gunmen would try to rescue a Cuban-American man being held there on smuggling charges, state officials said.

Gumersindo Jimenez, a Quintana Roo state officer, said immigration officials received several anonymous phone calls from someone saying that assailants planned to free Hanoy Cardentey from an immigration detention center in Chetumal, the state capital.

Cardentey, who has a residence in Miami, was detained Wednesday after authorities found his boat drifting off Quintana Roo's Caribbean coast. He was detained and accused of trafficking Cubans to the United States via Mexico, Jimenez said.

Authorities declined to say whether Cardentey is linked to an attack last week in which masked gunmen forced immigration agents off a bus and then fled with 33 Cubans and four Central Americans on board.

The vehicle was later found abandoned in Chiapas state, and this week 18 of the Cubans walked across an international bridge in Texas and handed themselves over to U.S. authorities, according to Mexico's Attorney General's office.

Officials are investigating who kidnapped the immigrants and who helped them reach Texas.

Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's deputy federal attorney general, told Televisa network late Thursday that investigators are looking into whether members of the Zetas - a gang of hit men linked to drug cartels - were involved.

Vasconcelos said the gang could be making inroads into the lucrative business of human trafficking. He did not elaborate.

Cuba's ambassador to Mexico, Manuel Aguilera, blamed a Miami-based mafia for the attack.

In recent years, several Cuban-Americans believed to be people smugglers have turned up dead in the Yucatan Peninsula, which lies just 120 miles (190 kilometers) southwest of Cuba. Mexican authorities say Cuban-American human trafficking rings operate in and around the Yucatan resort city of Cancun.

Questioned in Texas, the Cuban migrants told authorities they were taken to a safe house in the Gulf coast port of Veracruz, put on a bus with fake Mexican immigration documents and sent to the U.S. border.

Nine Mexican immigration officials and the two bus drivers have been detained and are being investigated for their possible involvement, the Attorney General's office said. Authorities are searching for the 19 migrants still missing, said Raul Vazquez, an official with Mexico's Migration Institute in Chiapas.

The migrants said they left Cuba on a makeshift boat and were picked up at sea by two men in a yacht who offered to take them to the United States. The vessel was then intercepted off Cancun by the Mexican navy, and the two men were detained on suspicion of human trafficking.

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