Lateral Deportation: Migrants Crossing the Mexican Border Fear a Trip Sideways Nick Miroff - The Washington Post
go to original February 15, 2013

Undocumented Mexican immigrants walk through the Sonoran Desert after illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. (John Moore/Getty Images)

While reporting this story last week among the down-and-out (and recently deported) at a migrant shelter in Tecate, Mexico, I met a few men who had a whole new reason to dread re-arrest by U.S. Border Patrol.

They were trying to sneak back into California. But if caught, they were likely to be transported hundreds of miles east by U.S. immigration authorities, where they would be released onto the streets of some of Mexico’s scariest border towns.

The procedure is known as Lateral Repatriation, or Lateral Deportation. It began a decade ago as a pilot program aimed at reducing migrant deaths in the blazing deserts of Arizona. The thinking was this: Instead of sending illegal migrants back to the Mexican side near their point of arrest, U.S. agents could break the catch-and-release pattern — and ties to local smuggling guides — by shipping deportees from the harsh deserts to more settled areas opposite south Texas.

An illegal migrant apprehended in the mountains outside Nogales, Ariz., for example, could be processed and transferred by bus or flight to Brownsville, Tex., and expelled to the Mexican side there.

Depending on your view, this was either a humane gesture designed to protect the deportees or a cynical way to make a tough journey even tougher.

Read the whole story at The Washington Post

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