Thread: Free flights don’t stop migrant deaths

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... on-ON.html

Free flights don’t stop migrant deaths

Susan Carroll
Republic Tucson Bureau
Sept. 19, 2006 04:41 PM


TUCSON - The Department of Homeland Security has given more than 12,000 undocumented immigrants free flights into Mexico City since early July as part of a program officials have credited with saving lives in the desert.

But a new General Accountability Office report found no direct correlation between the number of border deaths and the "interior repatriation program."

The report, released this month, noted the exposure-related deaths in Arizona actually increased during the time the free flights were offered in 2005.

In recent years, top DHS officials have pledged to cut costs for the 3-year-old program, which has an annual price tag of about $15 million, but so far have been unable to do so. Many of the planes often are flown from Tucson to Mexico City less than half full, field agents reported.

The flights, which are only planned for the hottest months, will end as scheduled Sept. 30, and U.S. officials have not yet decided if they will start the program again next summer. Members of Arizona's congressional delegation said they didn't believe program has had an impact on border security, but stopped short of calling an end to it.

Others were more critical.

Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank that studies migration, said the government's claims that the program reduced deaths and repeat crossings was unrealistic. The U.S. Border Patrol made 1.1 million arrests last year, but only about 1 percent of undocumented immigrants took advantage of the free flights.

"There was a gross oversell of what this program would be capable of," he said. "You're not going to have a measurable impact on border crossings, deaths or anything else" with about 12,000 to 14,000 people a year, he said.


Voluntary program
The federal government launched the program in Tucson in the summer of 2004, after years of record-setting death tolls along the Arizona-Mexico border. The program was part of the Arizona Border Control Initiative, a multi-million dollar push to crackdown on some of the most heavily trafficked stretches of U.S.-Mexico border in the nation.

As part of an agreement with the Mexican government, U.S. officials paid for twice-daily chartered flights into Mexico for any undocumented immigrant willing to return home. The goal was to save lives, officials said, and also break the smuggling cycle along the border. Typically, undocumented Mexican migrants taken into custody are returned to Mexico via the nearest border entry point.

Under the program, undocumented immigrants from Mexico detained in Arizona in the summer are asked if they would like be returned to the border or flown to Mexico City, where the Mexican government pays for a bus ticket to their hometown. If the migrants tell immigration officials they want to go home, they have a second interview with Mexican consular officials who try to make sure they didn't feel pressured to agree.

Initially, U.S. officials claimed the program was a success.

During the summer of 2004, DHS flew about 14,000 undocumented immigrants back into Mexico. While the flights were offered, the Border Patrol recorded 14 exposure-related deaths in the Tucson Sector, as compared with 45 during the same time in 2003.

Ten percent, roughly 1,360, of those flown home were caught trying to cross again during the program. During the same time period, 32 percent of those arrested who opted out of the flights were arrested again, according to Border Patrol statistics.


'At risk' migrants
In the report released Thursday, the GAO found no direct correlation between the deaths and the program. The report pointed out that in order to credit interior repatriation with the decrease in deaths from 2003 to 2004, officials would logically have to blame it for an increase from 2004 to 2005. The GAO found it was "not possible to determine the program's impact on recidivism rates and deaths with certainty," adding that deaths fluctuate based on a number of factors including Border Patrol enforcement efforts.

Gary Mead, the assistant director for detention and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he could not comment directly on the death numbers, which are tracked by the Border Patrol.

But, he added, "The people we're targeting for this program are at risk. We're looking at, in many cases, at women, children, people who because of the time they spent in the desert are dehydrated or having other medical problems.

"These are people who, if they survive one time, their chances of serious consequences increase if they come back a second or a third time," he added.

But costs are significant. With an average of 180 passengers daily, a one-way ticket is costing taxpayers more than $1,000 per person, under flight the program. A first-class America West airline ticket from Tucson to Mexico City purchased the same day as the flight is $527 with tax, about half the government's cost.

Congressman J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., said that since the program is voluntary, "its actual value as an enforcement measure is dubious at best.

"This could easily be construed as a benefit to illegal aliens, who get to choose whether or not they get to participate in the program," he said.


Measuring impact
Some academics and critics said the program was much too small in scope to have a measurable impact. Because the program is strictly voluntary, a condition insisted upon by the Mexican government in negotiations years ago, only a small percentage agrees to take advantage of it, critics said.

"Part of the point of interior repatriation is a deterrence effect," said Steven Camarota, director of research with the Washington-D.C. based Center for Immigration Studies. "It doesn't really work if it's not a systematic thing done to everybody, and that's not going to happen. The Mexican government isn't going to cooperate with us on a large-scale thing.

"I'm not against it," he said, "(but) I don't see how the program we have right now is all that helpful."

Congressman Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said the program is clearly not the "end all resolution" for the immigration issues affecting Southern Arizona. But, he added, "If it does anything to reduce even one death, I'm essentially supportive of it."


Reach the reporter at susan.carroll@arizonarepublic.com or 1-[520]-207-6007.

This method of repatriation is guaranteed to lower the number of repeat offenses:

Good one.