[NYTr] US Gusanos Funding Human Trafficking: Mexican Atty General

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[... which is what the Cuban government has been saying all along.-NYTr]

AP via Yahoo - Dec 10, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071210/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_us_smuggling_cubans

 Mexico: Cuban-Americans fund smugglers

By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press Writer

Cuban-Americans are financing the smuggling Cuban immigrants through
Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, an illegal trade that is fomented by the
U.S. policy of granting Cubans automatic asylum, Mexican Attorney
General Eduardo Medina Mora said Monday.

A violent ring of immigrant smugglers operates in Mexico, where Cubans
land on the coasts in rickety boats before crossing overland to the
U.S. border, Medina Mora told reporters.

"This has been legally proved, that people of Cuban origin but who are
citizens of the United States are involved, financing these
people-smuggling operations, obviously with the complicity of
Mexicans," the attorney general said.

"This has to do with U.S. policy toward Cubans," he said. "Those who
make it to (U.S.) territory by their own means can get automatic
refugee status, so that policy serves as an incentive" to smuggle
Cubans here.

Under the so-called "wet foot, dry foot" policy, the U.S. turns back
Cubans intercepted on the seas but grants asylum to most who make it to
shore. To avoid capture by U.S. authorities before making it to land,
many Cubans decide to go through Mexico.

Mexico is struggling to deal with a series of gangland-style slayings
apparently related to the trafficking of migrants from Cuba, which lies
only about 130 miles east of the Yucatan Peninsula, just slightly
farther by boat from Cuba than Florida.

In a new trend, nearly 90 percent of all undocumented Cubans who make
it to the United States now travel overland rather than reaching U.S.
shores by boat, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mexico also is having problems with its burgeoning population of
detained Cuban migrants, most of whom want to go to the U.S. Most
Cubans are released after being held 90 days at a Mexican immigration
center. Only about one-third of all those arrested in 2006 were
repatriated to Cuba, Mexican migration officials say.

Last week, three Cuban immigrants were treated for dehydration at a
Mexican hospital after going on a hunger strike to demand release from
a detention center. They were returned to the center and are awaiting
decisions in their cases.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.