Crime and Banishment: US Immigration Reform Likely to Add Stress on Mexican Border Towns Carlos Puig - The New York Times
go to original June 26, 2013

MEXICO CITY - The prospects for the immigration bill now under discussion in the U.S. Congress have a lot to do with whether it is perceived to enhance U.S. border security with Mexico. Many Republicans have been reluctant to legalize the status of foreigners illegally present in the United States without more measures to keep other potential illegal immigrants out. On Tuesday the Senate approved a plan to spend $40 billion over the next decade on building more fencing along the border, installing infrared sensors, increasing by almost 20,000 the number of patrol agents and sending surveillance drones flying overhead.

But this latest plan will only put more stress on Mexican border towns that already bear the brunt of unexpected and, often, unwanted waves of returnees from the United States.

Since 2008, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) has increased deportations of illegal aliens under a policy to maximize “the removal of those who pose the greatest threat to public safety or national security.” The agency says it has sent back close to 410,000 individuals from the United States in the 2012 fiscal year, almost 55 percent of them - 225,390 people - convicted criminal aliens. That’s almost double the number of criminals deported in 2008 - and, the agency says, “the largest number of criminal aliens removed in agency history.”

This may reassure the Republicans in Washington, but it worries local authorities in Mexico.

Read the rest at The New York Times

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