Illegal immigrants get flights home

PHOENIX – More than 130 illegal immigrants were flown for free to the Mexican interior Monday on the first flight of a U.S. government program aimed at curbing repeat immigration attempts.

The flights are a voluntary alternative for illegal immigrants to the usual practice of being driven back only to the border, far from their hometowns.

The first commercial airliner carrying immigrants in the test program left Tucson and landed in Mexico City in the evening. Buses were waiting to take the immigrants to local bus terminals for the trip back to their home towns.

“This is a 100 percent voluntary program, so the Mexican government is just carrying out what the migrants have requested,” said Bosco Marti, of Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Interior Repatriation Program will include about two flights a day to Mexico City and the western city of Guadalajara.

“This is a well-coordinated, crucial step that is necessary for both humanitarian and law enforcement reasons,” said Asa Hutchinson, the undersecretary for border and transportation security, in a written statement.

“The deaths of so many in the desert are a tragedy that must end,” he said.

Andy Adame, a spokesman with the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, said about 30 of Monday’s passengers were considered at high-risk of dying in the desert if they attempted a second crossing. They included single women with children and the elderly.

The department is funding the program, which is estimated to cost $12 million to $13 million at two flights per day, each carrying up to 150 illegal immigrants, Adame said.

The pilot program is to end by Sept. 30. Then the department and the Mexican government will evaluate it and determine future plans.

The new program follows a more controversial one in which border officials involuntarily returned 5,600 migrants caught in Arizona to Mexico through border ports in Texas.